Sunday Morning ~ The Stick of the Children

Ndodo ya ana ndiyo aphera njoka. ~ It is the stick of the children which killed the snake.

~ Chewa proverb

August 21, 2022

Hi Everyone,

We got four inches of rain here this week. It started gently and I worried it wouldn’t be enough. Early on Wednesday we watched from under our porch-bed net as the grey skies let out just the slightest bit of mist. Not knowing what was to follow, I worried this would not be the soaker we needed. Amelia and James have been here for a week now and knew how much I wanted it to rain. We wrote our morning story, hopeful the weather app wasn’t wrong. I drank my tea and we looked around for our morning visitors but there were no butterflies to watch or hummingbirds to tease us. As the rain drops got bigger and began falling steadier, the kids eagerly exclaimed the good news which made me laugh. I love how they want to make me happy. The rain finally came straight down in a steady rhythm, precisely how I’d hoped. Satisfied we didn’t have to do more wishing, we crawled out of our dampening nest and went in to do rainy day stuff.

For the first time in months we stayed in the house for an entire day. The kids played with legos and stuffed animals making up stories with elaborate themes, acting them out with great aplomb. We wore sweatshirts for the first time in several weeks. Though we’ve had dry summers before, this is the hottest one I can remember here. The rain was such a relief. It was a good rain, steady for fourteen hours, filling up every upturned pot and leaking down the greenhouse walls. There was no torrential downpour to wash away the top layer. The earth was cement-like from the drought and there wasn’t much loose on top to wash away, but I worried about extremes. 

My garden hasn’t produced much this year. Between the late start and the dry conditions I’m picking enough to eat but nothing to preserve. The rain this week gave it a boost but many of the plants were weak and spindly, insects were attacking, and chipmunks and rabbits were taking more than their share of the harvest. My garden is important to me but before getting too depressed about it, I thought about areas where the entire landscape is changing because of drought. I imagined having my dietary customs eliminated because of the weather. The wars in South Sudan are fought over the shifting farmland, whereas I can walk across the street to the farm and buy vegetables if the drought wrecks my garden. If the farm couldn’t use their irrigation system though, what then? This could be much worse. Blueberry farms have lost half their crop.

My grandkids keep me distracted and away from the news. Watching them I can easily see how avoiding current events can become a habit. I’m listening to headline news clips and relishing the idea that this generation of brilliant little minds will kill the snake. I’m being educated on how much smarter kids are being raised. After graduating from his year in public kindergarten my grandson can read multisyllabic words with ease. I never even went to kindergarten! I was well into first grade before the whole Dick and Jane story started taking hold. That just sounds like baby talk to me when I see what these kids are doing. I’m embarrassed to even tell them what I was reading at their age. They are comfortable with varied races and same sex couples. I remember thinking Liberace was the only gay person in the world. These kids won’t be fooled by some reworked textbook full of whitewashed history. I don’t expect them to fix all that previous generations have done to harm our civilization and planet, but if they so chose, I believe them capable of it.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Letting It Be

Cikacita mang’a, cileke, mawa, cituluka. ~ When it shows a crack, just leave it alone, tomorrow it will come out.

~Chewa proverb

July 31, 2022

Hi everyone,

The college here on the island hosts a summer institute in July, described as a week long “ideas festival”. They gather experts on topics affecting our environment, lifestyle, and future with a different theme each year. This year the topic was “Our One and Only Ocean” and I found it transformative. I am usually impressed by the speakers and format, but when I saw the topic this year my heart sunk a little. I’m not usually moved or motivated by marine biology, though I appreciate those who are. Although not drawn to the topic, I was craving some intellectual stimulation, so decided to attend. I listened to speakers tell of their attachment to the ocean, how part of it they feel, and wondered what was wrong with me? How have I missed this passion? They told childhood stories of their introduction to the ocean and how they were instantly hooked. It was forevermore a part of who they would become. I listened, riveted and perplexed, as my story is so different. My childhood ocean stories are not the beginning of a lifelong love affair.

I was never a swimmer. I flunked my swimming test at camp when I was eight and wasn’t allowed at the dock with the other kids. I was skin and bones, couldn’t float, was always cold, and had a fear of drowning. I still do. I find nothing pleasurable about putting my body in cold water. Scuba diving isn’t anywhere near my bucket list. I don’t even like visiting aquariums that much. I am very happy to stand on firm ground and look at the water. I appreciate those that make a living from the sea and provide the seafood I love. I will never balk at the price; it’s a hard living. The sea doesn’t call to me like the mountains do. It’s crazy that I should end up living on an island but that was the compromise I made with my husband. He loved the ocean, boats, and sailing, and wanted to live near the sea. He spent weeks on a schooner when he was a teenager tracking whales in Newfoundland and Labrador. When we first started dating, he told me stories of being the only one on the boat who wasn’t seasick. I listened as if he were Magellan, quite unable to relate. I love nature and am happiest outside. I try to live as close to the earth as possible, and when I say earth, I mean the parts not covered by water.

When I was a kid we went to stay with my great uncle in Nova Scotia. A priest and a fisherman, he was pastor of a parish in the town of Shippegan. We drove over bridges and took ferries to get there and were welcomed with great fanfare. It felt exotic and made me feel special. We slept at the big rectory, attended church events, toured the fish canning factory, and went out on his fishing boat. That last excursion was billed to the kids as a great adventure and I remember being excited and a little scared about being out on the high seas. I was up before daybreak and ready to go, but it didn’t take long for that mood to vanish. Once out on the ocean, I lay curled up on the bunk below, seasick, miserable, and could think of nothing but wanting to go home. When my father made me go on deck to watch them haul in the nets, the flapping fish, the water, the rocking boat, was my idea of hell on earth. We fished for cod with a drop line and I hated it. I wanted my feet to be on solid ground again and that’s all I could think of. For years, just the discussion of a fishing boat made me a little nauseated. I decided long ago that watching Jaques Cousteau specials would be as close as I would come to underwater discovery.

So, I was surprised when the week-long multifaceted look at the ocean, rooted in storytelling and history, innovative, creative, and forward thinking, left me inspired and hopeful. I feel like I missed out on a great party. As I listened to the speakers’ stories of falling in love with our ocean I was captivated. There are great minds doing great things. It made me feel a bit small, like I’m not living up to my potential. There is so much I don’t know, so many people working to preserve and improve our world. Photographers and explorers for National Geographic told us how they began their careers. It seemed the lot of the charmed and sainted. It was superhuman to me. So when an audience member asked how the commoner could possibly be granted the kind of privilege those on stage had, the speaker (a renown underwater photographer) answered, “Start taking photos in your backyard. Do it a lot. Get good at it.” I laughed. I loved that answer. It’s true of anything. How can we become senator? Run for school board or town council. Be good at it. It all made me rather hopeful. Learning about the potential for restoration and preservation made me hopeful. Listening to young female aqua farmers made me hopeful. I had not expected ending each day in such a state of hopefulness and gratitude. In this time of impending climate doom, watching my garden withering in the drought, hopefulness was not an emotion I’d felt for awhile. But I feel a shift. No one wants to be on a suicide mission so hopefulness is imperative right now and I am glad we’ve gotten a dose of it all around. The marine preservation projects, the Democratic movement on climate change, the vote in Kansas, all make me feel like we can turn this ship around. 

Now it’s grandkids time! Nothing more hopeful than that!

Love to all,

Linda