When the daylilies begin to bloom I always think of my mother because she loved them so much. She died in 2005 in Maine during her summer stay on Heron Island. My father, my brothers, our spouses, and our children sprinkled her ashes in the Damariscotta River in front of their cottage. My father decided that we should pick every daylily in the garden and let them float in the water with the ashes. It was a foggy, rough evening when we set out. We were uncertain if it was too much for our odd flotilla of a Boston Whaler, a skiff, and a surf board. We had every bloom in pitchers, buckets, and handfuls as we cast them into the water with ashes and tears.
At dawn the next day, I walked the hightide mark on the west shore certain I would find one of the flowers washed up in the flotsam and jetsam. But walking the length of the island, I was disappointed that they had all been washed out to sea with the tide. I walked slowly back to my father's house down the central path and decided that the emptiness I felt at not finding a lily to press in my journal echoed the hole in my heart left my the loss of my mother. When I came down the moss covered path to the garden much to my surprise the garden was blooming with a whole new batch of lilies perhaps saluting to the spirit of my mother.
"All too often we associate uncertainty with risk, but there is a world of difference between them. While loss may be implicit in risk, uncertainty is simply a state of limited knowledge. It comes with being human to know that uncertainty attends not simply the stock market and weather, but what we do, what we say, when we say it, what we think, how we feel. It's the kinetic energy in the air before a thunderstorm, the sky full and crackling, the atmosphere infused with expectancy. 'Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive.' Emerson wrote in his essay 'Experience,' reminding us continually of the value of those forces that are random, volatile, erratic." The Ecology of Uncertainty, Akiko Busch
At dawn the next day, I walked the hightide mark on the west shore certain I would find one of the flowers washed up in the flotsam and jetsam. But walking the length of the island, I was disappointed that they had all been washed out to sea with the tide. I walked slowly back to my father's house down the central path and decided that the emptiness I felt at not finding a lily to press in my journal echoed the hole in my heart left my the loss of my mother. When I came down the moss covered path to the garden much to my surprise the garden was blooming with a whole new batch of lilies perhaps saluting to the spirit of my mother."All too often we associate uncertainty with risk, but there is a world of difference between them. While loss may be implicit in risk, uncertainty is simply a state of limited knowledge. It comes with being human to know that uncertainty attends not simply the stock market and weather, but what we do, what we say, when we say it, what we think, how we feel. It's the kinetic energy in the air before a thunderstorm, the sky full and crackling, the atmosphere infused with expectancy. 'Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive.' Emerson wrote in his essay 'Experience,' reminding us continually of the value of those forces that are random, volatile, erratic." The Ecology of Uncertainty, Akiko Busch
very nice, Catherine...love that quote. xoxo