Category Archives: Seasons

winter, spring, summer, fall, writing about it all

Racing Against the Moon

“Jewish Time” is often code for being five, ten, even fifteen minutes late. Jewish time also has a deeper meaning, because the Jewish calendar is calibrated with the cycles of both the sun and the moon which means some holidays are in synch with a full or new moon. Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, begins appropriately with the new moon. Each year on the first night of Sukkot, we look up through the cornstalk roof of our Sukkah and see a full moon shining through. It is a kiss my husband I always savor. And now, Passover’s full moon.

Look at the sky tonight and you will see a gibbous moon a sliver or two away from fullness. I am racing against that fullness to get everying in order for Passover. What does this involve? OK, that’s one Jewish question to which you know there can be five, ten, fifteen answers. For the Darvicks it means a total scrubbing of the kitchen to rout out the chametz (anything leavened). It means eating up all the noodles, bread, rice, peanut butter and tossing out-of-dates condiments their metal caps smeared with gunk.  It means taking a toothbrush to the molding joints of our cabinet doors, wiping down the tracks of the drawers, sponging smears of grape jelly from the freezer gaskets and more.  HOW does grape jelly get there, anyway? It also means a wholesesale switch over of dishes, baking pans, silverware and whatall, all, all and more all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a pain in the neck and a boost to the soul, this fury of scrubbing, wiping down and sponging. The metaphors to inner cleaning rise like a sink full of bubbles. There is something so satisfying about the results: cabinet surfaces once again gleam softly in the light; the fridge is free of any (and I mean ANY) crumbs; no more wrinkled peas rolled out of reach on the freezer floor.

Newly-lined shelves are  stocked with matzoh and other K4P (Kosher for Passover) foodstuffs. The vegetable bins are as full as my heart as I await the arrival of family and friends around our table. There is a lot of gratitude, too. To have so many friends and family to welcome; to have the means to purchase what we need and more. To be in a country where grocery aisles are filled with blue signs directing Jewish customers to the K4P aisles. Could Moses ever have envisioned such freedom? Could his wife ever have imagined having to switch the goatskins?

But still I am racing. There are  a last few untesils to dunk in boiling water, fish to pick up, food to start cooking. There is the table to set with my great aunt’s plates, my grandmother’s silverware, the white melamine Seder plates the kids made in nursery school and the Elijah’s cup my grandfather gave us when we married. The moon edges closer to her fullness and each night I go outside and tell her, “I’m getting closer.,.I’ll make it. Come Friday night, my fullness will match yours.”

The March sky and now even April’s have been reminders of the ancients. Each evening in the western sky, Venus and Jupiter have been do-si-doe-ing across this heavenly dance floor of black velvet. Some nights they shuffle close as teenagers. Other nights they do a respectable minuet, their celestial bodies no closer than fingertip to fingertip. Last month a gleaming crescent of moon cut in on this magnificent planetary pirouette.

The ancients depended on these lights to mark time, plant their crops, guide their spiritual lives. And way way back in time, a time much closer to the time when the greater and lesser lights were set into the sky, a full moon shone upon a night of destruction and liberation, a night when the climactic tenth plague propelled from Egypt a band of former slaves who followed a leader who was following the voice of an invisible, yet omnipotent, God. They brushed their lintels with the blood of a sacrifical lamb, ate hurriedly with their neighbors and fled the straits of their enslavement, hastily-mixed bread on their backs and terrifying unknowns at their front.

The word Seder means order and this Friday night the world over, Jews will follow the same order: opening the same book, performing the same rituals, reading the same words. They will eat variations of the same foods and tell the same story to their children and their children’s children, a story almost as old as the stars and moon shining down upon them.

It is story that looks back into slavery and forward to freedom. A story that binds generation to generation and binds one’s insides with bread of affliction. (Eat matzoh for a week and you’ll know what I mean.) There will be readings from across centuries of philosophers, feminist readings, and perhaps a reading of eating bread during Passover because that was all there was to eat that Passover in the camps. Some will sing the spiritual Go Down Moses and all will sing Dayenu.  And it will be enough.  More than enough and good, so good.

So I rush to the final tasks, cross off the final items on my list, all the while whispering to the moon, “I am almost there, I am almost there.” All the while I whipser to God, “Thank you. Thank you for Your outstretched hand, and the parted sea. Thank you for Miriam’s song and the manna. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

Flower Talk

Hard to believe that this flower has lasted for two weeks. We were on our way out of the farmers market. I doubled back for a jar of homemade peach jam while Martin headed to the car. Except he didn’t. He met me at the entrance with this gorgeous glowing scarlet zinnia in hand. It matched the flowers on my skirt.

I adore zinnias. Ever since fourth grade when Mrs. Lyle sat a vase of them on her desk, I have been in love with how saturated with color they are. Pink, yellow, orange, red, I swoon over them all.  And there my  husband stood with this single crimson blossom. I still smile at his gesture.

We came home and I put it in the vase you see there at the left. Something about the three colors together — the intense red, the cobalt of the liquer bottle and that little virgule of green — just made my heart sing. How does a single blossom last so long? I bought an entire bouquet earlier in the summer, and they barely made it to mid-week.  But this flower is magic. Maybe because she knows she was bought as a love gift? I had Martin take a photograph to preserve the memory although in truth, it’s unforgettable.

My husband, as many of you know, takes lots of photographs.  And if you know he takes photographs, you know that “lots” is an understatement.  For some time now I’ve wanted to join forces and put words to some of his images.  I’ve started small. Every once in a while when something really speaks to me I take a few moments to meditate on what he has captured.  If you like, come visit                 his lens/my pen.

In Victorian times the zinnia was symbolic of absence or sorrow. Probably because wild zinnias — dingy purple or muddy yellow —  weren’t much to look at. The flower has undergone some heavy duty cultivation since their discovery by Spanish conquistadors conquistadoring through Mexico.  For me, they have always been symbolic of joy. And now of a sweet moment of affection in the farmer’s market, too.

Word Garden

We plant gardens with any number of goals and challenges in mind, orchestrating hue, height and bloom time for a symphony of color spring through fall. We fill shady spots with hostas and scatter marigolds through the vegetables  to keep the bugs at bay.  Red-hued monarda (bee balm) is a surefire draw for hummingbirds and butterfly bush well, you can guess what guests flutter by for a visit. I plant delphinium everywhere I can just to lose myself in that cobalt blue.

And if color weren’t enough, I wander through garden centers and page through catalogs for the sheer joy of reading the names of the flowers, delighting in how the Latin and English roll around  my tongue and vocal cords.

How can you pass up a flower named heliotrope? Deep luscious purple, its name evokes three-syllable flight followed by  a hard landing of explosive consonants.  And is there a soul out there who does not think of the Wicked Witch of the West at the mere mention of “poppies…poppies”?  Forsythia bloomed in huge golden hedges back in New York.  Every spring I thought what a great dedication that name would make for a gardening book.

Coreopsis, euphorbia, cimifuga, lisianthus — don’t they just fill your mouth with wonder?  And then there’s wisteria. Many hate its rampant habit. Not me. Wistfulness on the vine, those lavender-tinted clusters. One whiff and I’m back in third grade reaching on tippie-toe to inhale the perfumed blossoms hanging heavy over the wall from the house next door.

But my all time favorite is Party Girl, pictured above.  How can you pass up having in your garden a flower that goes by the name of Party Girl? And up to that name she lives! Last year I planted her over there and this year her sister is whooping it up some eight feet over. A couple of their cousins somehow made it to the back yard and are tossing their saucy pink heads back and forth in the breeze.

Next year I’m thinking of interplanting some Bachelor Buttons amongst my Party Girls. Just think of the propagation. How knautia.

Feathering the Tiniest of Nests

Do you see them? Twin hummingbird babies! Their miniscule mommy has built a nest in a tree right outside my son’s front door. For a few weeks now he would step outside for some of that incredible Cali sunshine and find himself eye to beak with a tiny feathered dervish. Looking closer he discovered she was building a tiny nest. “It’s the size of  a teacup! It’s incredible!” he told me. Then the report that there were itty bitty eggs in the nest.

And now the eggs have hatched. Look closely at twelve o’clock.  You’ll see two little beaks pointing upwards, like hungry antennae trying to home in on their mom. Elliot did a bit of hummingbird research.  Now that the babies have feathers, they have grown so big that there’s no longer room for Mom in the nest.  She has moved somewhere nearby, close enough to keep watch, close enough to still care for them. Real soon, however, they’ll take flight on their own.  No pushing them out to test their wings. They’ll just fly. Where that leaves Mom, I don’t know.  Will she clean out her home?  Toss old test papers and Matchbox cars and redecorate? Or will she set up house elsewhere?

Hummingbirds are imbued all kinds of symbolism. My favorite interpretation, a Native American perspective, links these tiny flying jewels to accomplishing that which seems impossible. Hummingbirds, they thought, teach us to pursue the miracle of joyful living.

Whenever a hummingbird visits our garden it’s as if a miracle has come to call. Hovering to snack from a delphinium blossom or darting so fast from one tree to the other I can barely follow, the hummingbirds appear and disappear like lightening, but friendly, inviting.

I am glad that hummingmommy built her nest outside my son’s front door, involving him in yet another of Mother Nature’s miracles. I am grateful he and his sister live each day knowing that miracles surround them. May we all accomplish that which seems impossible and come eye to beak with the miracles that surround us every day.

Eleventh Plague at the Eleventh Hour

Awoke to a snowfall. One month into spring by the calendar and there was snow on the ground. Snow here. Snow there. Snow was falling everywhere. Passover begins this evening and it was SNOWING. This Hebrew month – Nissan – was decreed in the Torah as the first month of the year. The natural world was beginning anew, regenerating everything in sight. All the sky above me was regenerating was snow. (Let’s leave Rosh Hashanah, that holiday we all call the Jewish New Year, for another post.)

When I’d gone to bed the night before, the hemlocks edging the backyard were upright and green, adolescents taking in the rays. By morning they were once again bearded with snow, their spines hunched over as if protecting their fading and feeble hopes for sun. I considered introducing an eleventh plague at the Seder this evening.

I drove to synagogue with the wipers wiping and the defroster defrosting. Today is the fast of the firstborn but the rabbis set aside the fast if firstborns studied first. So, firstborn that I am, I was off to synagogue for the morning service, a bit of study and a last bit of bread before the coming week of matzah. The morning would close with burning hametz – the last of the forbidden crumbs/noodles/bread that we had gathered last night.

We stood before the grill, waiting for the hastily-gathered twigs, paper and a windblown branch or two to catch fire. When it finally blazed we recited the blessing nullifying any errant crumbs we might have missed and threw our little bundles of chametz into the fire. We stayed a few minutes warming our hands and faces in the open flame while the snow fell around us.

I pondered the plague of snow God might have sent had Pharaoh ruled Minnesota instead. It occurred to me that God had sent something else from the heavens in addition to the insects, boils, hail and the rest. There was manna, too. As the story goes, the Children of Israel could imagine it into whatever they wanted – roast beef, pizza, cherry pie. Walking to my car, the snowflakes falling about me, I imagined them into cherry blossom petals, the kind that swirl through the air on fragrant breezes come May. Long after the snows have passed and we are truly set free from winter.

Six Degrees of Hibernation

Winter in Michigan is sheer monotony. Cold and grey. Grey and cold. Sometimes it’s frigid and white. And white and frigid. Feels like living in an Ansel Adams photograph but more negative. But somehow this year the season is passing and I’m nowhere near as crazed as I was last year for it to end. How have I made peace with this least favorite season?

1. I strive to find color in this grey and white world. Even if it’s a stop sign or the orange lollypops of snow blower reflectors. Or the bright blue of the recycling bins. I’ve made it my business to see past winter’s monochromatic palette.

2. Living so close to the Central Time Zone means the days begin to lengthen fairly quickly. The handful of minutes that accumulate in the wake of the winter solstice translate into more daylight. More daylight, more happy. More daylight, better spirits. Lengthening days — winter solace.

3. Soup. I’ve gotten into making hearty and nourishing soups. Anything goes soups. Clean out the vegetable bin soups. Noodles and beans soups. As long as they’re hot and filled with good things to eat, soups are getting me through.

4. Hot chocolate. With whipped cream. Not too often and not too much but my jeans aren’t going to fit any worse for this bit of comforting warmth every now and then.

5. Dropping the guilt that I’m not into winter sports. I don’t care if I “just wear the right clothes” I will enjoy it. I don’t want to shiver. I don’t want the wind blasting my cheeks. I don’t want to put on seventeen layers to walk stiff legged throughout the neighborhood, alert for icy patches that will land me on my fanny faster than you can say Frosty the Snowman. I’ll stay in, thank you and do my yoga, get on my treadmill and read about Tahiti.

6. I know it will end. It’s already late January. There is light at the end of this tunnel. Her name is Spring. And she will arrive.

Commuting with Nature

I don’t consider myself a fall kinda girl. Born on spring’s cusp, raised in the south, I once ripped the first reddening leaf from a backyard dogwood tree, loath to acknowledge what that blushing leaf presaged — fall followed by inevitable winter. Even then, with our puny winters, I was not a fan. Then I moved north, to live in a land where for months during the year, ice cream can be stored on the back patio. The prospect of wearing sweaters (and turtlenecks no less) doesn’t thrill me at all. I get no kicks from parkas and ice fishing.

Autumn still presages that fourth-place season, but over time, October’s charms have wooed me. Blazing golds, crimsons and oranges and ambers make my heart soar. I love the way the burning bushes start out all hussy red and fade over the month into demure rose. For nearly three months we live in an ever- changing paint box of warm hues, as if Nature knows our souls must stock up for the coming winter months. Like the woodpile against the shed, the colors of the changing leaves are insurance against the season of bleak.

You don’t have to do anything to harvest fall’s beauty. No weeding; no chasing away marauding rabbits; no digging or dividing clumps of perennials; no backaches. Fall is a blowout freebie of color, a Jackson-Pollack-pull-out-all-the-stops season where the palette changes by the hour, nudged by temperature swings and the ever-changing light. In no other month but October does the sky echo the cerulean brilliance of the heavens out west. October has grown on me, nudging me to embrace the chill in the air and savor the sun on my face, knowing it will be centuries before we are reacquainted.

Two weeks ago I experienced an October wonder that can only happen where sudden drops in nighttime temperature work their magic on summer’s tired green leaves. I was driving home from work, dreading the slow chug along pockmarked roads woven thru with careless cell-chattering crazies. The skies were dark with a passing rain, which was just going to make it all the worse. I set out and within moments the ride was transformed. The dark clouds ahead of me didn’t budge but the sun had begun to break through in the west behind me, igniting the trees lining the road. Each and every tree glowed against the leaden sky, as if some cosmic paintbrush had tipped the leaves with light, deepening their colors to ruby, topaz, citrine. I was mesmerized. The burning bushes weren’t just burning, but combusting in waning sunlight and their own inner brilliance. The slanting rays were magic wands turning every tree in sight into something so spectacular I was literally gasping out loud.

For the first time in my life, the artists’ cry about rushing to paint before the light changed took on a whole new meaning. In a way I never had, I experienced that time-is-running-out feeling and how do I capture all this before the light changes? How to I remember it all? How do I share it? Get it down? I uderstood as never before — painting isn’t about rendering a tree, house, a figure coming home at dusk. It’s that mad dash to snare the rapture of that ephemeral relationship between light and subject. Never before had I been more blessed to be stuck in traffic.

And if that wasn’t enough, at daily juggernaut of my ride, I looked to the right and there, just waiting for me to notice, a slice of rainbow peeked through the grey skies. The words “slice” and “peek” give the impression this bit of rainbow was something slender and delicate. But it was more of what the French call a “tranche” — a thick slice, something with heft, hacked from the main. It was not so much of arch, but a stocky abbreviation of same striated with, well, every color of the…you get the idea. I literally couldn’t believe my eyes. Couldn’t believe the show that had been mine to witness for going on fifteen minutes now. Mother Nature was shouting with everything she had, “Hey looky HERE! See what I can do!” I drove the next two miles or so dazed by it all, keeping as much attention as I needed to on the traffic and using the rest to revel in the landscape beyond the windshield.

Then, at what is normally the final irritating intersection, one more treat lay in store as light and cloud and Force came together. That stocky abbreviation of a rainbow of three miles back reappeared. No longer abbreviated, it arched across the sky from one end to the other, suspending itself above me in one mind-boggling bridge of brilliance. To the north the sky was marbled in blues — navy, midnight, cobalt — relieved by a single transparent brush of pure illumination. I waited at the red light, beneath this arc of many colors feeling that God Himself and Herself had plucked me from normal and put on a show to beat all shows. Just for me.

Then the light changed, I put my foot on the accelerator and crossed beneath the now invisible celestial arch. The magic carpet ride evaporated along with the traffic. Gone. But not. The memory of it all is still glowing within, astonishing me still. I only hope I have been able to share an iota of the beauty.