heartwood
while out walking :: Northwoods :: Upper Peninsula
I’m not sure how many years ago I started gifting myself the Thanksgiving day linens, but every time I go to pull out the months ago ironed table cloths and pressed, plastic-wrapped napkins, my hustling hostess heart offers a little prayer of gratitude. Only this year I couldn’t find them. Still in the midst of a basement renovation with this, that, and everything a little bit everywhere, we were looking in every nook and cranny for the linens that morning. An even better find and reminder, however, came when I opened a drawer in our office armoire. Staring back at me were the stacks of envelopes with their names in my handwriting.
“All of my valuables walk on two feet.”
Years ago I started writing Mother’s Day cards to my kids—what they were like, what I was enjoying in being their Mom, what I wondered the next year(s) might bring—a little note from me to them for when the annual day would come around, but their Mom maybe wouldn’t get to do the same. In addition to those cards (that I’m woefully behind on), I’d take papers brought home from school or bits from around the house and pen a quick line about what made me smile or laugh before sealing it and writing on the outside of the envelope a bit of encouragement for when they might want to open the penned within—”for when you need to know your strong, for when you need a bookmark, for when you need a Valentine, for when your kid breaks something expensive of yours, for when you take your own kid fishing or hunting, for when you’re wondering how to spend your day, for when you need your A Team."
Opening page of Barbara Becker’s book, heartwood.
While I thought I might send these memories of their once upon selves in college care packages, I finally just came to channel what a friend advised during the throes of a school auction effort many years ago. “One touch… one touch of the paperwork, the whatever—put it where it needs to land and onward we go.” I hear her voice when I’m rearranging a drawer, staring down the clothes I don’t want to fold that instead get tossed into the Goodwill pile, and when I want to keep what should instead get a write up and sealing for him or her to later read from their Mama (and often themselves).
“At the end of the day, does the source of our inspiration truly matter if it gets us where we need to go?”
Days before I went hunting for those linens, there were text messages with a niece asking if I had any recipes or notes in my Mom’s handwriting that I could share with her. Knowing what she’d created for my dog-loving heart last Christmas, I had a feeling she might be crafting something extra thoughtful given my Mom’s health and our family’s collective heart moments in the hard. With so much of Mom’s and my communication being electronic or in person in recent years, I knew that most of my notes from her would be in scrapbooks or boxes (maybe with the Turkey Day linens?) of remodel disarray.
As I poked around the kitchen in the midst of those text exchanges, I opened up the cabinet of stock pots and spied a little love note from Mom. She must have taped it to a dish that I’d used to make her an egg-in-a-frame, a favorite childhood dish and familiar something that I still make when I need a little hug of comfort on my plate. “So not a recipe,” I messaged to my niece, “but I treasure her handwriting here…”
I wish I could remember how I came across Barbara Becker’s book, heartwood, but the cover got a screenshot and sending to my daughter in case she wanted to be my little elf in gifting ideas this season. I thankfully found the beautiful cover behind Christmas wrap, cracked open her words and insights yesterday, and finished her many lovely takes this afternoon on my start to the New Year.
Three years ago today I numbly, yet with all thoughts, feelings, and wonderings firing, wandered from one waiting area to the next after watching the nurse practitioner call the doctor over to review the x-ray up against the white backlight in the hallway. I knew the news wasn’t good. I steeled myself sitting there alone, waiting for her to come in and deliver news that would chart a course unplanned for that year. Three years since and I still can feel and visualize nearly every moment of that day… Trying to read the tech’s face who did my first of countless scans… Passing a member of our pediatrician’s office who would continue to care for my kids’ throughout the year ahead while also offering great support to their Mom… The text update meant for my husband that instead went to my friend who had our kids for the day. “As far as she knows I’m here getting my back pain checked out…” And then I watched the truth glide across my phone in messaging blue without any ability to pull back that kind of a share.
“In the face of the hardest things we will experience, be as a boulder in a mountain stream. Listen. Take your time. The next move will emerge from the stillness. This is how we go forward, step by step, infusing darkness with light.”
Sitting on an island of angst, enduring the month-long wait and procedures for a diagnosis, and then bucking up and pushing on through what some called a “good cancer” (no cancer feels ‘good,’ by the way)… those knowings can change a person.
The experience never leaves her, it latches on in a spirit of both gratitude and trepidation. It maybe roots around in a haunting way whenever persistent back pain won’t go away. “That’s why survivor groups are so great,” she offered a few weeks ago. “You can just talk it out with others and know you’re not the only one.”
The words rang hurried and hollow as she hustled through a lickety split assessment. She didn’t know that the word ‘survivor’ is one that I never use because how does that categorize my friends who’ve passed away or are still enduring? She couldn’t know that the ‘after’ is something not really addressed when one rings the remission bell. But the meds she prescribed helped and got after what likely was the source—finally dropping tulip bulbs in November—something I’ve been meaning to do for years now.
“It’s like a rebirth every year, and with them, my heart opens a bit more to the possibility that hope can take root, even from the ashes of unfathomable loss.”
I’ve been thinking on that fall effort for spring’s reward ever since. The digging up, the placing within, the leaving be until one day a bloom, a note, an effort shows up and gift another’s now. That’s my wish this New Year… what can be planted, practiced, or shared in such a way that the sentiment takes root, ages, and later shows up in just the right way, at just the right time when another needs?
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Making room for the conversation, the book, the walk… Penning the gratitude, inscribing the page, sending or saving the note or picture… These one touch efforts that wrap up a longing heart, a season of knowing, a loved one later hoping for a hug of familiarity and remembering… what a gift, indeed.
“We ware, all of us, imperfect beings. But in that moment, I realized that we all carry a humble spark of connection and love, there for the taking and there for the giving, that simple gift of showing up.”
January 2 home light & onward—2019