Friday

Remind me next time I plug up a whole week with appointments, especially if that week is in bulb planting season, that perhaps I'd do better spreading things out a bit. Remind me that I actually like having the occasional free morning. That I can get a real thrill from just watching the leaves, or rather the dappled shade of leaves dancing on the floor or wall of the farmhouse as the sun comes in, and that you can't do that when you're trying to fit in as much as possible into a very small box of time, because you have an appointment. (Today's culprit: a haircut.)

Lovely morning once again. The chickens agree.

Colorful breakfast, due to yesterday's market flowers. Dahlias are utterly gorgeous this year (so much sunshine!) but this is the end of their bloom time. You can't expect market flowers in Wisconsin past October.

Breakfast has to include some of the apple cider doughnuts, also from the market. (Are you also of the opinion that apple cider doughnuts sound and look a whole lot better than they taste?)

And then a tight squeeze: a few bulbs into the ground (25 anemonies to be precise, 20 to go in later in the day), and I'm off for that hair trim.

My haircut person has been snipping away at my hair for maybe ten years now. She runs her own salon, and she mothers a four year old son and she plays lots of competitive frisbee. So it's a good guess that she keeps herself tied up in knots over time. I ask her about it, and, too, what's the one thing that guarantees relaxation for her. 

She has to think about it, but finally acknowledges that it's acupuncture. Not necessarily because all those needles relax me, but when you're pinned down like that, you have nothing left to do but let go of everything. For half and hour anyway. 

We are that out of control with demands placed on us! But, she hit a point there for me and perhaps for you as well: nothing is truly relaxing if your mind is spinning about what it should be doing at that moment. If you're halfhearted about your efforts to let go. What relaxes me exactly? It's inconceivable to me to go so far as to pin myself with needles to "unwind." Massages are great but that's an expensive way to go limp, in mind and body. So what is it?

I come back from the haircut and instead of rushing to add more bulbs, to frame a post for this day, to do my budget for the month -- oh, you know, the million things that are on everyone's to-do list, even among those who are retired, would you believe it -- instead of doing any of it, I sit down in our brightly red plastic Adirondack, the throw away chair we picked up at the curb last year, and I turn my face to the sun. Call it a ten minute infusion of vitamin D. Totally relaxing.

Pretty quickly afterwards, it's time to pick up the kids. Pajama day in school for the little guy, lolipop treat from the teacher for the older girl.

And the day would have continued, very much on track to be ranked up there with all other quiet October days. With reheated soup no less. Comfortably, on the couch.

But it did not end like that. It ended instead with an email, from the husband of a very special friend. Maybe you noted her presence in my life? I would on rare occasion refer to her -- my friend from Australia.

My friend died last night. Pneumonia no less (I'm quite certain she would not mind if I gave her this moment on Ocean tonight -- she was so very, very accepting of my diffuse style of writing about the everyday). 

Over the years of Ocean writing, I've met a number of people. Not in person, but through a correspondence, born of some post that inspired a first note from someone far away, but did not end there. I'm old enough and Ocean is old enough for us both to have lived through the death of at least two solidly good connections made that way. But my friend from Australia was in a class of her own. A post card writer, she sent me many. Sometimes she would have me release photos from Ocean, so that she could make them into cards and I would find myself staring at an image of daylilies in the mailbox.

How she would fill that card, always squeezing out every last possible space! She wrote densely, beautifully, intelligently.

Not all days can end with a smile. Though maybe this one should? For her? Jean, you will forever have a place in my heart. This smile is for you.

with so much love...