Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Five Million Shades Of Green


I am living in the rain forest and so, as to be expected, it is raining. Drizzle and downpour, they take their turns, the lightening flashes, thunder cracks startling me.
The drumming of the rain is a percussive song, the notes are liquid and varied and a part of the curtain which surrounds me, gray and green. In ten years living in this house, I am not sure I have ever seen it so green.


There are not enough words to describe all the shades of green from delicate, pale fern to deep emerald magnolia leaf.

The boys are coming this afternoon. Lily said that Owen slept a lot yesterday and did not eat a thing. His body is healing. Since it is raining, we will have an inside day and perhaps I will give him the pirate magnet set I bought for him in Apalachicola.


Yes. It might be the perfect day for pirates.

Tomorrow is Jessie's birthday. She will be twenty-five. I remember her birth as if it were yesterday and how when she was born a rainbow was in the sky and magnolia blossoms in the room and all my brothers and all my friends were in the house to welcome her as well as her big sisters, her brother.
She and Vergil will be here tomorrow and we are so excited, all of us, to have them back for a few days. Greta will be coming too, to the delight of Owen and Gibson. We will be going into town for supper, meeting up with the whole tribe and what a sweet and good thing it will be for me to have everyone together.
All my babies. Babies grown to the most interesting humans I know. Still my babies, I don't care what anyone says. And they will always be.

I am contemplating that today. How to be perfectly honest, being a mother has been the most profound fact of my life. I know that this is not true for everyone nor should it be.
But it is for me.
I am thinking of how in my beliefs, love is the current from which it all comes alive and indeed, from which it all springs and I do not have the mind to truly know what that means when applied to the Universe or the planets or dark matter or the stars or quantum physics but I still believe it. The love of the electron for the proton, of the light for the dark and the dark for the light. For the tree and the roots and the leaves and the water and the necessity of the sunlight. For the hand and the shape of the egg. For the pressing and stroking of the string to create the notes. For the exact and proper placing of the paint or the word or the colored threads. Our definition of love is so limited, so poorly understood and yet, so yearned for, so desperately sought, so brilliantly and in so many different ways expressed and interpreted.
And when I held my babies for the first time, I knew a tiny bit more of what love means, even as to the idea of the current which fuels all of it and if that is not holy, I do not know what is.

No more possible to describe than the green.

Not for me. Maybe for you as you see it. We are all so different and that is exactly as it should be.

And yet, connected, us, the stars, the chickens, the grass, the trees, the water, the fire, the earth, the feather, the finger, the fin, the blood, the bone, the light, the dark.

I am going to make soup.
Good morning.



11 comments:

  1. And we're blessed -- yes, blessed -- to be reminded of this love. Thank you, Mary.

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  2. Ah, yes.

    You've got it, got all that there is to get.

    thank you for sharing these beautiful words with us.

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  3. Well, your rainforest is as different as different can be from this desert with its howling dry wind.
    But all that mothering stuff. Yeah. Absolutely.

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  4. While reading your beautiful words, I was struck by the thought that there will come a day when Mary is longer here...no more pages detailing the ordinary/extraordinary life you live. But these words will live on for your children & their children & their children...and they will *know* you.I can only imagine what it would be like to read the daily writings of my mother, grandmother or great-grandmother and then to truly & honestly comprehend her life and thoughts. What an amazing gift you are leaving your family!
    Angie D

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  5. Your words made me stop and Breath and look out my window at the greenness of it all. I would love to taste your soup. I know my spirit soul would feel so good because of it. Off subject: please tell Billy to post I miss him and his Maw-Maw. Have a lovely Florida day from your Alabama neighbor.

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  6. Happy birthday to your beautiful girl. You, dear Mary, know how to love. You are supremely gifted at it and this is no small part of why your children are who they are. And why I come here daily to bask in your lovingness. Why we all do.

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  7. Elizabeth- And you are a blessing in my life.

    Tearful- Thank YOU for sharing your words, as well. I mean it.

    Denise- We know what we know, don't we? And how it is, for ourselves, at least, whether it is wind or rain that topples the trees where we live.

    Angie D- Yes. I love that idea. Thank you. What a beautiful comment.

    Mary i- I hope you would like my soup. Thank you so much for your words. I will pass the word on to Billy. I miss his posts as well.

    Angella- I think you are supremely gifted at loving. I hate to imagine a world where I did not know you. Thank you. Always.

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  8. Speaking of love, are you familiar with Kate McGarrigle's song about the formation of salt in the ocean? It's peachy. Here's a link: http://youtu.be/CpTzawl3OmI

    I hope you are not drowning in the rain.

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  9. sarah- Never saw that before! Love it! We are not drowning but there are jokes being made about arks.

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  10. It scares me a little bit when people say being a parent is the most profound thing they've done. I have never had a lick of parental instinct, but when I hear things like that I think, "Geez, maybe I really AM missing something here!" I mean, like you said, it's not for everybody and I don't think it's really for me, but I still worry about it.

    Oh well. C'est la vie. Dave is not about to let me adopt anything larger than Olga (even if I did get the urge, which I haven't so far) and any other possibility is pretty much off the table!

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  11. Yes, connected. And I don't have the parental genes except for dogs and cats. Maybe because I was an only child. I don't know.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.