Morning shadows . . .

The eyes of the aspen are watching to see
if before you cross over to that next place
you’ll take your simple life and grind it up
in your imagination so as to build exquisite
arbors of memory your children and children’s
children can stand beneath and find shade. 
If you are faithful to this calling then future
generations might pause beneath the shelter
of your effort, shored up with the knowing 
that one of their kin dared each day to look 
unafraid into the very heart of this sorrowed
heaven on earth and that even in the vex of
grief said thank you, thank you for it all.
The eyes of the aspen are watching to see
if you’ll spend the remains of your life this way.
If so these earthly angels promise gold as you
surrender, a quaking whisper of those
forgotten words from the old book: well done.
—John Blase, The Calling In What Remains of Your Life
The Jubilee

The sun is out this morning stretching the shadows of trees, branches, and leaves across the white, brightening this first snow on the mountains across the lake . . . and the pages of poetry in my lap. Little icicles drip from the eaves but it’s cold out there, still ten degrees below freezing. We’re tucked in with no appointments today, no schedule, except for the rhythms of a winter day. Brewing the coffee, cutting up the pears and oranges for our breakfast fruit bowls, making the eggs and toast, keeping warm. After breakfast I will climb the stairs to my computer, turn on the little space heater near my table, and I will write.

Way back when we first moved to the cabin I didn’t know that I would be this age when I sat down to finish this story in earnest. I honestly hadn’t thought of myself this age back then. I pictured the just-retired me, full of energy, reveling in the new-found freedom, doing exactly as I liked each day, which included writing this book . . . a chronicle of life in the old cabin on the lake. But we all know life isn’t that simple or predictable. I filled a journal each season, journal after journal, year after year, awed at the beauty, wanting to capture it. I put to paper the story about the Elves that I told my grandchildren in chapters at bedtime. For many of those years we lived in two places. Our city house near the kids, and this cabin. I was a grandma, a helper, occasionally a speaker. I baked and decorated and dreamed, created beauty with yarn and words. I lived.

Perhaps I needed to live long enough to write this book, long enough to be the girl, the teenager, the bride, the mama, the grandma, the great-grandmother in this place . . . to tell it right. It has swirled in my head so long that it is a part of me. Bits of it have been shared here and there and sometimes I wonder if it’s all been said, doesn’t need to be shaped and finished. This poem this morning confirms otherwise.

The days are shortening. It is time to put supper in the oven, to tend the hearth, to re-enter the world where I am wife and home . . . the world that has always been more important than the other. “Old people, who have felt blows and toils and known the world’s hard hand, need even more than children do, a woman’s tenderness.” –Willa Cather. I remember questioning the truth of this statement the first time I read it. I was young. I know now that it is true. It’s part of the story.

If you are faithful to this calling then future
generations might pause beneath the shelter
of your effort, shored up with the knowing 
that one of their kin dared each day to look 
unafraid into the very heart of this sorrowed
heaven on earth and that even in the vex of
grief said thank you, thank you for it all.
The eyes of the aspen are watching to see
if you’ll spend the remains of your life this way. . .