Winter, Marie Ponsot read by thatgirlelena

still life in montana

The clouds, the fields, and the wind. Is anyone here beside me?

Whoever was here is gone.

Something used to fit exactly so here.

Insulators like these are no longer used.

What made the beavers stop?

Oh that's right. Watch your step and don't walk backwards.

I couldn't think what this was all about.

Turns out Mom found some seeds and thought she'd plant them.

Waste not, want not.

They'll look like this in about six weeks:

My dad is almost 80. The dogs play fetch with him every day.

I got teased for taking a photo of this.

For me, it's a photo that speaks of waiting.

does it go?

Cookiegirl

He calls at work to say,
“Now that we are starting new-
I brought a spider home.” Not even
my favorite after-work drive
through darkened streets lit with living-
room lamps and red tail lights pulling
into driveways coaxes me this time to relax
and let the universe in. (Which is why we need
a tarantula, he had said before I disconnected.)

Now, still buttoned in my parka and laced
in my boots, I wrap my I’m-back hug

around his neck as he teeters on his stool

talking to Cookiegirl in his sleepy
voice. With tutu motion she hesitates,

then eases from his hand to climb about his chest.

Such delicate stallion steps. I try to pull away

when she regards me and my mittens.

Take them off and stroke her fur, he whispers
to my fear. See, he teases, how she laces
rosy ballet slippers halfway up each thigh? I bite
my lip and nibble on my list: sirens, wrecks, test results, giving
him my trust. A car drives by. Cookiegirl shrinks. I slip
off a mitten and bare my skin. Invite
the world in.

This poem was first published in Flutter Poetry Journal which is closing up shop with its next issue. It's easy and it's understandable when we close our doors and pull the shade. Especially when it comes to issues of trust. A few years ago I made a mental list of doors I realized I needed to reopen. At first, it went against the grain of my being. Then, some things came into my life: Cookiegirl, for example.

Her name was actually Susie, according to my daughter and the man who brought the spider home. When I saw her shrink in fear at the sound of a passing car outside on our street, I realized she and I had quite a bit in common. Naming her "cookiegirl" helped me tone down the volume of my assorted fears.

When I was at the writer's conference in Denver just a bit ago, I listened to a talk about caves. The speaker had a full blown panic attack in a cave with her class of middle-school students. After that, she avoided close spaces. Over time, this fear controlled her and all sorts of spaces began to feel confining. She realized she needed to go back inside that cave and confront the fear controlling her.

So she did. Over and over again.

In her talk she shared some simple lessons she learned. Tell any climber or spelunker or canyoneerer these lessons and they nod their head in a *duh* fashion. But think about applying the lessons not to a cave, but to whatever avenue you drive down, whatever alleyway you balk at, whatever door you won't open.

In exploring a cave, the lead person is often asked if the tunnel she is following goes anywhere. "Does it go?" is the term. I think about this and realize that often times we don't pursue a tunnel because we've determined too soon that it doesn't go. Or we fear what it might take to make that tight squeeze even though it could lead us to the enormous cavern, the open space, the pirate's treasure. Whatever it is you need.

Another lesson101 is to maintain three points of contact. Two hands and a foot. Or two feet and a hand. Once you know those three points of contact are solid, locomotion can continue. Four points of contact? You are standing still. Two points of contact might increase locomotion, but at what risk?

I was sharing this talk with a friend of mine who climbs some of the highest peaks in the world and canyoneers for fun in the winter time. I'll see if he will let me share some photos from these adventures with you sometime. But meanwhile, he nodded his head at my sharing such simple lessons with him. Sometimes, he cautioned, a person needs to swing out into open space. Sometimes you have to be willing to have no contact for a moment or two.

I want to apply that to my life, to that list of fears that control me. Cookiegirl and the man who brought spiders into my life were the beginning of my tackling that list of fears. People like the climber and the caver-talker help me along the way. Doors are starting to open. I'm more willing to consider that tight squeeze because I want that open space, to let the universe in.

my mother's touch

Mom greets us at her door.

Like my grandmother, like my mother- no matter when we show up,

food (favorite food) is ready to be sliced and served.

And peeled and roasted and baked and grilled and frosted and . . . eaten.

Or whipped and spread. 

I can't show you the photos of the scratch hot chocolate sauce she made us one night.

Like daughter, like granddaughter, we were too busy moaning

over spoonfuls of sauce melting our ice cream.

My father's backyard, my mother's glass. Late afternoon sunlight.

Her plum tree. This fall, she'll turn 300 pounds of plums into jam.

 

My mother's dog.    My mother's touch.

center of nowhere

On the road from here to there, from now to back then. We'll pass through the center of nowhere.

          

  I promised my daughter I wouldn't take her photo, only of her new ride.

The weather advisory warned of ponding on lowland roads.

We left on a rainy morning.

In every direction, four strong winds.

In 221 miles, there are perhaps two places to buy gas. This is not one of those places.  This is the center of where those four strong winds blow. But still, I like to stop here and I've taken some photos to show you why.

The grocery portion has two aisles. See the antler on the rope? It hangs above the area where the cashier stands. When her customer is ready to leave the store, arms full of groceries (the only place to buy groceries in a 100 mile radius), she reaches up and pulls the antlers down, which causes the door to open. Cool, huh?

This is my favorite moment on the trip. Around the corner from the luncheon counter (sits five) and down a rickety flight of yellow wooden stairs, and then around one more corner, is the bathroom. I love this doorknob. The keyhole doesn't work.

While I was taking this photo, someone told me I am easily amused.

 Public phone for anyone who needs to use it. Oh, and the county directory.

Back on the road again. No, we aren't there yet, but by now we are feeling like we are halfway back to the past. Then? Cue the train and its whistle to escort you the rest of the way.

crossing the divide

Through my daughter's windshield, from my phone's camera.

We followed my parents from central Montana, which was under lowland flash flood watch to an old mining town just across the divide, which was under winter advisory conditions.

Six hundred miles and meeting-ups with seven different groups of good friends and family. In only two days. Today I am tired but humming. Tomorrow there will be more talk and photos from my camera.

For now, enjoy this view from my passenger window.

homesteads and beaverslides

This is the house that my great-grandfather built.

This is the house where my grandfather lived.

This is the house where his nephew still lives.

This is a fairly current photo.

The Homestead Act of the early 1900s increased the 160 acre parcels to 320 acres. The prove up period of time was reduced from five years to three years and further allowed a five month absence from the claim each year. Farming in Eastern-Montana back in the day was difficult, but . . .

on the other side of the state, cattle ranching on the Grant-Kuhrs Ranch was thriving:

Learning to farm and ranch in Montana, with its annual precipitation of 10 inches, our farmers and ranchers developed new methods to hold onto the land and their crops. One of the most colorful adapations (still used in parts of the state to this day) is the beaverslide hay stacker. Due to the arid climate, hay did not need to be stored in barns to prevent mold. Hay could be cut and stacked and stored in the fields.

This weekend my daughter and I are headed into beaverslide country. I had hopes to take photos but the weather forecast calls for ponding water on the lowland roads and a need for snowshoes in higher elevations. Likely I'll not be setting out across the fields to take photos. Here's one from the National Park Service website.

Click here to enjoy more photos. If you go to the multimedia section of the website you can watch a video of the beaverslide in action. Oh yeah boy! Did you catch the poetry in all this talk? prove up period....ponding water... lowland roads...

I wonder if I had a prove up period in my life, what would it be or did I miss it already?

the pointy part of a triangle

When you look at this illustration, which group did you identify with? Winnie and company? Or Calvin and Hobbes?  Outside your preference for one cartoon character, I mean. Did you feel the way it might feel when someone comes into Your Territory? Or did you feel like C& H, lost and wandering within a foreign forest?

When I first saw this, I was curious. Although on many a given Monday, I might feel like Eeyore the donkey with some doom 'n gloom attitude, I hope I've never looked down into my own valley with such uninviting eyes. So I like to think I'd be the inviting Pooh character, sliding down the tree trunk and introducing myself to Hobbes. Maybe Calvin first, I am not sure. Getting to know something or someone outside your own forest is thrilling and it is also scary business. Risky stuff for a girl like me.

Think of a triangle, with the pointy part at the top. The bottom or the wide base of this triangle of well-being concerns issues of security (a warm place to sleep at night, milk and butter in the frig, basic health).

When our life is best illustrated by the above photo, our triangle of "well-being" would be one flat plane. If we are sharing that spot of earth with these cows, we'd not be thinking about Mozart or say, tug boats on the Hudson. We would be entirely occupied with security, the base of our triangle. So to speak.

Should that basic sense of security become established (the rain stops, the waters recede, the pizza man delivers) then we can add a layer on top of that base. We've begun to build our triangle of well-being.

Up next? Another layer that involves our emotional needs:  a sense of community, a sense of belonging and a sense of self-worth or esteem.

Once that layer is stable, we can move up another level and work on the spiritual and humanistic emotional realm. Here's where we spend time working towards our "full potential" (oy! whatever that might be). If the first two layers of our triangle are iffy, we won't be spending much time here.

What's after that? A layer that addresses our need for harmony in art and intellect. I know, that's what I said! Who would guess that most of us reading this would relate to the way we've been drawn to some sort of creative expression.  Art? Writing? Mapping? Photography? Music? Snoring in synch with the television? Making graphs of subjective well-being? Stomping grapes in Italy?

Here's a graph to smile at; it shows us how we rate our sense of well-being:

                *Oh, those were the days!*

I am pretty sure we know about the twenty-something factor illustrated above. And some of us know about the forty-something crash illustrated above. But I am more interested in the climb on the right side of the graph.

What does it take to climb out of that crash? What is at the very top of the triangle of well-being?

The ability to take a risk. Without risk, we stagnate. We cannot climb. For Pooh and Company, the risk of sliding down the tree trunks to meet Calvin and Hobbes is maybe too much for them. However, if you have had any experience with these guys, you will know that some of these guys will, in fact, slide down the tree and meet Calvin.

And you'll know that Eeyore won't and you'll know already that Eeyore is rather depressed and disengaged in life. I don't want to be Eeyore (except on Monday mornings). I want to take the risk, take the slide down into my valley and greet Hobbes. And then maybe take Calvin and him on a tug boat ride that starts halfway across the world from where I am.

first things second, last things first

His teacher crawls under

the lunchroom table to read

with Gabriel  - upside down.



She holds his attention with her

sparkly sneakers pressing the book

gently to the underside of the table.



The first three battles she chooses:

writing his name without snapping

the pencil in half; learning to trust

rules about sharing the few books

on the shelf next to the radiator

that burns every time he touches it.



Standing quietly in the recess line

won’t happen until he learns

to trust direction. Gabriel cannot tell


what has happened before

and what might still happen after;

the top from the bottom, the inside



from the outside, sitting on the back

steps of a porch, or sitting at the front

of a classroom, waiting for someone

to show up or for someone to let him in.

 

spoons and nests and nesting spoons

I have been living in what I might call a storage unit for the past couple years. On the outside, it looks like a house. On the inside are cartons and boxes and bags of stuff. If a volcano were to erupt and overflow, down the street and all over my house, and then if thousands of years later someone were to designate this spot as an important dig for the 21st century- they'd end up baffled. The archival material being stored in this house belongs to three different lives. The once-married life. The failed-blend-two-families-together-with- five-teenagers interlude. And then the empty-nest life. 

Wait.

There are basically four layers going on in this place. Recently a they-always-come-back-home-stage has developed.

I have lived in three different places in six years and in those years the above life stages have been lived. Moving me is not fun. The last time I moved everyone argued about whose turn it was to move Sherry's books. And whose turn it was to sort through the pantry and toss out expired product. All this to say, most my stuff got tossed into cartons willy-nilly, helter-skelterish, neither here nor there, whogivesaflyingleap. My son's socks, a bowling ball, turtle wax and camping tins could easily be in one box. And could easily stay in a box together from one move to the next. Because what happens is that you don't completely unpack. What happens is that you end up with stuff in a box from people in your past.    

                     

In my kitchen above the stove beside the corn starch is a box of Jello from  . . .hmmm . . . about thirty years ago. It has the price tag of fifteen cents on it. And no barcodes. Somehow this box of Jello survived a few moves. Now, we make sure it doesn't get tossed out. Now we want to remember what grocery stores were like before scanners and bar codes. Now, such memories are fond: remembering what life was like before.

During that time of cheap Jello, I fell in love with a set of measuring spoons. How unlike me. These spoons came from the other side of the divide and were heavy pewter, handmade and so curvy. And how unlikely that the spoons were gifted to me back in those days. I *hearted* these spoons.

When chaos hit, the spoons moved with me. Events blurred.

Then the spoons fell off the wall and behind a stove no one wanted to move just to retrieve spoons. Events blurred.

Unbeknownst to me, when I moved again, someone cared enough to move the stove and retreive the spoons and pack them with his back-up fishing tackle and my still-like-brand-new roasting pan. Events blurred.

Although I still have cartons of his stuff in my garage and his cooking knives in my laundry room (where all good housekeepers store knives), he doesn't live here anymore. And it is past time for me to reorganize the various storages rooms, now that my daughter is moving back home. Time to sort through the archives.

I opened a carton in my garage this weekend and found my spoons. One of the nicest things he did for me I am just now learning about. I wonder what else I'll find in all the cartons in the garage and in the laundry room. And the den and the shed and the troll room. And I wonder about the things we carry around inside our selves that we are afraid to open. Perhaps we'll each find more curvy heavy spoons, perfect for nesting.