slouch

You don’t even know that you’re doing it: shoulder humped, chin lowered. You’re slouching. So, is this a bad thing? 

Hold on -- this isn’t what I woke up thinking. Let me go back a bit: I woke up thinking that Ed and I are in the middle of a conversation that hasn’t come to any reasonable conclusion. People do that. They dance around points that are being made and avoid reaching agreement because they know that the only way out of the stalemate is to say something like -- oh, all right! I’ll do it your way, but I wont like it! And neither wants to say it.

The question remains – who is going to say this? Him, me, both of us?

I also woke up thinking that I had wasted over an hour watering flowers last night only to find that we were due for severe storms. This is what happens when I get busy with work: I forget to check the weather report.

(slouched flowers after the rains)

The key here is that I woke up early. And I thought, too – I could surely use that early morning for Yoga – there’s a class offered that goes under the label of Peaceful Flow. It’s described in this way: You'll expand your breath, open your body, and rest your mind so when you go back into your world you'll be fully aware of your inner peace.

Before breakfast, before work, before Ed fully awakens, I go to Peaceful Flow.

I ride Rosie out to the Yoga studio and yes, indeed, it is heavenly and very stretching, strengthening and soothing, all by the fields of prairie flowers...

And if I take anything with me it is the realization that I live in a position of “slouch.” At my computer, riding in on Rosie, eating a meal. And here is this morning’s yogi guy telling us that if you just lift up your chest, chin, pull back your shoulders, uplift your face into a smile, you’ll have all this positive energy flowing.

You have to put up with this sort of stuff when you have a chatty yoga instructor.

But the fact is, he isn’t altogether off base. And indeed, his stretches and poses and movements and breathing instructions are so helpful that they stay with me even as I leave the studio, even as I mount Rosie and we travel home. So exuberant and up-lifted am I that I nearly fly off Rosie, though perhaps that's just my imagination soaring.

The fields never looked so golden.

The truck farmers are tending their crops -- you can see them, here, just to the east of our crumbling barn...

It continues to be a beautiful morning.

We eat breakfast on the porch...

I grab a ripe pear to stick in my backpack...

....and I go off for a day of classes. Campus is busy in the way that it gets on school days.

And, predictably, I am tired when I get home. Ed and I have reached a travel compromise and he is the one who has packed up his ideas and put them aside, though we’ll be doing some independent trips in the interim so that neither feels as if she or he has been short changed. More on that as we actually get closer to time off. Right now, I am so far away from time off that it seems odd that I should even be thinking about it.

Ed bikes tonight and because we’re nearing the end of the grocery shopping week, I eat whatever is left, with, of course, tomatoes.

He comes home with a Subway footer and I'm tempted by that too.

You can’t feed me this stuff! I don’t need another meal after dinner!

He grins and floats the sandwich nearer to me. I take bites – one, another, and another. He laughs.

first day

Breakfast today? It’s a toss up! Lee’s flowers at the kitchen table tell me – inside!

But everything, everything else shouts – the porch!

I’m up early. Three classes today and the first one begins at 9:30. I tell myself I will not rush, but I do rush, even as I start the routines of a new semester at 4 a.m. This is the way it is and I am ready for it.

On the porch I tell Ed – a "first day of classes" picture! Take one? And he does, quickly, as if to take into account the faster pace.

And then I’m off. It’s a Rosie day, a beautiful, warm, very warm morning. And still, as I zip by, I notice that the soy is taking on that September gold tone that says we are no longer in the summer season...

I scoot by the lakes (without traffic, you can do the photo straight from Rosie’s seat)...

I turn toward campus, I park and walk up to school and the day begins.

And because it’s the first day, three classes seems like a lot, so that by mid afternoon I’m spent. Like that student outside my office window who looks like she’s not quite with her full energies yet.

In the late, late afternoon, I take Rosie to Paul’s café and Ed meets me there. This is a familiar routine and such a good one and it’s all so serene and peaceful until we speculate about future travels. Ed talks about taking it down a notch. Less predictability, more adventure. On the first day of teaching, I can’t quite wrap my mind around travel where there isn’t a water source, a light bulb, a clean sheet over a bed. And this is what happens when I'm immersed in work again and Ed stays home – I look ahead toward a lighter, saner, easier day, while he itches to infuse it with challenge.

We have to shut down our planning. It’s going nowhere and besides, it’s 95 degrees outside. 95! So the flowers need water and tomorrow’s class needs work and, too, there are the tomatoes – more of them, to sort, wash, freeze, cook.

But those are good, kind routines. I like holding that hose once more – the quiet of it, the discovery that accompanies my movement from one bed to the next. Here, did you know I still get the occasional lilies?

We end with tomato corn bisque. Reheated. Yes, throw in some fresh herbs from the garden and kernels from an ear of corn and call it a meal. 

Do you want popcorn? - he asks late at night. Every person has their own perfect plate of food to offer. Ed's is popcorn, from a bag, done just so. Shared, late at night. An important reminder -- this is what we share, this is what we love.

tred lightly

People dig in their heels. It’s what we do. We take a position and suddenly we have to defend it. Why? Because.

So I have to be careful not to defend yoga as the cure-all for everything that feels off. I recall reading not too long ago that, if overplayed, yoga can do more harm than good. An important point to remember, especially for people like me who tend to leap rather than take small, cautious steps. 

You wont be surprised that I returned to yoga today. (In part, it’s the 'new member' deal – all the yoga you want in the month of September for $30.)

And again it felt better than great.

But... here’s the but. It takes time. On yoga mornings, I don’t get as much work done. And, too, there is Ed, reclining, not needing to do much of anything being retired as he is, which is quite wonderful except when he sets out to distract. With tomatoes, for example.

You think that's a lot? There are more. Triple that amount.

...and I say – stop! No more tomatoes! I cannot deal with them. I don’t have time! And, so long as we're on the subject of dealing with things,may I ask again why are you so difficult about the forthcoming wedding?

My daughter is marrying in three weeks and my oh my, is this ever incompatible with the ways and mores of Ed. And the more I care about his full participation, the less inclined he is to go along. So after the ever so gentle yoga, where I touch my eyes, my mouth and my heart to do all things well (I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do well, but let’s just say everything) I try to work and failing that, I try to establish an Ed commitment to various wedding events, and failing that, I retreat to the porch and lose myself in piddly stuff. Like reading reviews of yoga mats on Amazon.com.

Ed asks if it’s a good day for us to play tennis, clearly thinking that, given my retreating mood, it’s not. Initially I balk (I’m behind! My work is killing me! You wouldn’t understand!). But we go out, just him and me on the Honda...

... and we play one lousy game after another and eventually we end it and there’s tomato soup at home, a good home, where who does what and when rarely matters, where ceremonies come and go and one person wants this and the other wants something else, and we stumble through it all and in the end we nod and smile because it is such a solid, fine home. A wonderful, beautiful home.

The doorbell rings. Hi Lee! Oh, thank you!

om

Most anyone would pick a yoga class by the instructor. Of course. A teacher may really depress your interest in going forth. When Ed and I went to classes some years back, we felt it was like medicine: terrible tasting but good for you. You can’t continue for long on that premise.

But there are many instructors that would work for me. And I need something else: I need proximity and an enjoyable trek over. And so when I search for a yoga lesson, I start close to home. In Fitchburg.  A hop and a skip from the farmhouse.

But first, breakfast. Even as I'm hurrying to get going.

...while Ed takes his time. 

And now it's 10:30 and I'm in a class with a group of very adept women. 

The class is a tad fast paced. I’m not so quick that I can slide from down dog to up dog to roll over dog (as you can tell, I’m not that familiar with the terminology). I can’t become a warrior and open my heart and feel the vertebrae sink into the mat all in one fell swoop. And still, I like the poses, I like the language (I had no idea we carry most of our stresses in our hip! Why not – I’ll go along. Out it goes! Good bye stress!), I like the fact that there is plenty of space and the big windows look out on the prairie.

But what I like best – and this is why I will return, for sure – is that when I get back on Rosie to head home, I am like a different being -- so relaxed that it's as if I can melt right into her in the most comfortable way. We surge forward, with the wind in our faces, the prairie fields flowing to the right, to the left, not much in the way of cars, just Rosie and me, flying home. I do not remember ever enjoying a motorbike ride as much as I enjoyed the one after the yoga class.

Feeling terribly noble (house cleaning before yoga, then the stretches and the movement and the ommmmmm), I retire to the porch and watch the chipmunks play and the humming birds chase each other before me.

Days like this are heaven sent. Ed and I talk more about building out a front ‘winter deck,’ we read, work, talk some more...

 ...and now it's evening and the grill is heating pieces of charcoal and the mustard, sauerkraut, tomatoes (yes, lots of tomatoes!) are out. My girl and her fiance arrive and we sit out on the porch and eat  chicken brats and local corn and watch the sun go down.

tomato music

A lovely, cool morning. An oatmeal on the porch kind of morning (they wont last!).

An “it’s time to pick more tomatoes morning.”

And it’s time to face the music. I’ve been freezing and cooking and making salads, but Ed keeps warning – this is just the beginning!

What were we thinking? [Easy: a seed is a seed – it looks small and lonely in the dead of winter. We should plant it. And this one and the next.]

I admire the tomatoes, wash them, sort them...

I freeze some more. That’s it. My freezer is full!

You know I have a freezer in the basement.

These lovely tomatoes are allergic to your freezer.

There’s nothing wrong with that freezer!

You’re right. Your freezer's fine. What’s wrong is that you have old bags of ancient foods in there. Scary bags. These tomatoes are too beautiful to share space with them.

Not scary! Just old bags of cooked tomatoes!
Maybe they were, in the past, cooked tomatoes, but they’re from before my time and we’ve been together nearly seven years.

Nearly seven years! My oh my, we're getting’ up there. No wonder there's the occasional ache, the stiffness.

So we bike to Paul’s café. None of this wimpy Honda stuff.

(along the way: Farmer Lee's field)

(speeding down a hill)

 

...futile that it is as Paul's appears to be closed for the holiday week-end, and so we bike to the tennis courts and we put in a good game of me running away from the hard serves Ed's into on this day.

At home, I google local yoga classes over lunch...

(robin outside, looking in)

I’d tried yoga many, many times – alone, with daughter, with Ed, with friends and each time I walked away thinking – my, that was nice, but it went no further. That was then. Time to return to the stretches and the poses. Ed asks -- want to buy a used yoga mat off of Craigs list?

In the evening I make tomato bisque.

 

So, soup tonight and maybe every night henceforth and we’re surely hungry for it after all that biking and avoiding hard serves and the air is still cool and Ed works on replacing the rotted board up on the dormer overhang and I’m thinking – not so terribly old after all. Not him, not me. Not just yet.

one final day of August

We’re getting sloppy around here. We forget bedtime, wake up time, mealtime, rest time – it’s all getting rather fuzzy.

He does this, I do that, Isis interrupts, or not – nothing is predictable, nothing is regular.

It’s time (for me) to go back to school. You can see it: fall is in the air.

And I do (go to school) today. Faculty have a full day of meetings and so I rev up Rosie and get going. Early.

And when I get home, I’m tired. I had seen my doc this past week – that back issue was getting to be no small thing – and she told me basically this: move around a lot and avoid becoming obese. Well yes, fine, but in the mean time my back aches and I’m spent.

And so maybe tomorrow I’ll revise my game plan and maybe we’ll play tennis more and I’ll bike more and all good things will flow, but toady, I came home, I watered my overheated babies for one whole hour and I cooked dinner (when you’re tired, there’s always stirfry...)

... and then I could do no more.

heat

A warning appears on my inbox, even before the sun rises: beware of the record breaking heat today.

I’m aware and I beware.

I’m up early to prewater the more fragile plants, though I’m thinking – I should stop already. They’re nearly spent. I’m nearly spent. It’s not zen watering anymore, it’s time consuming and probably not very effective.

So maybe one last time? My babies:

I do grocery shopping today and later, I’m back in town for this and for that. Ed has his own engagements and preoccupations and for the first time since I don’t know when we don’t even pause to have a morning meal together.

And maybe that’s the precipitous event that sends me sliding. Or maybe it’s that I haven't quite made the leap to a different kind of schedule. Or maybe it’s that we talk now of our next trip together and we are so not in sync as to the parameters and requirements of it that I think – uff! ...sometimes being so completely different from your occasional traveling companion-slash-landlord is a challenge.

Of course, the evening comes and we settle down for an easy meal of baguette and what not  (baguette from the farmer’s market today)...

...and we watch the Convention, or at least I watch. Ed calls it as it really is – terribly boring and frustratingly uninformative and he threatens to go to sleep at 8 and so I turn it off and we face our differences over travel and he gives in a little and I tell him -- don't bother, just deal with me when I get good and sick roughing it in dangerous places and we grin a little and suddenly the evening is not so bad and we watch the tail end of a movie that really has no great merit but nor does it bore or bother either one of us.

Tomorrow he works and I work and it’s a whole new kettle of fish when we move into that world of deadlines and timelines (at least for me there are deadlines and timeline) and yet, I know that at the farmhouse, there is always this aura of calm and he buys into it and so do I. He asks today – so, you’d like, for fall, for winter, a space that’s warm, with windows on all sides? And I know we are not today or tomorrow going to construct a space that’s warm with windows on all sides, but I know, too, that he’s serious about putting it out there and I’m serious about turning off the convention and his rough hand catches mine and this is the way we are.

(at the market today)

door

Ed finds one more old screen door in back of boards, metal bits and cabinet parts in the garage-shed. He puts it on Craigslist and within a day he has several inquiries. Even though the same thing can be bought at Home Depot for $18. And he provides the link to that website. And then reminds you that he’s selling it for $5. Ed doesn’t care so much about the $5, he just wants to move the thing out and put it to good use. Give it away – you might say. No, he'll tell you. Believe it or not, “free” doesn’t sell as fast as “cheap.”

As I sit on the porch (yes, all day I sit on the porch... I have work to do and I try, too, to squeeze in some writing), I watch the people come over to look at the door. The first guy shows up, admires the flowers around the farmhouse (thank you!) and  rejects the door instantly (don’t know why). But he’s wearing a Madison high school t-shirt and so I hail him from the porch, being a proud parent of kids who attended that school. Hey! Do You know Mr. Levine? They loved Mr. Levine! Retired some while ago. I’ve been with the school for thirteen years... Well know, my oldest was out of there before you even arrived. That’s how old I am.

The second buyers come over and say “we’ll take it” even before they cross the courtyard to give it a good look.  (They also say – beautiful place! – and I’ll remember them for that.)

I think of beauty in the morning, at breakfast, as Ed and I race each other in counting the number of times humming birds and other birds stop by the flower bed just in front.

I think of it, too, when I do a quick watering. I have a few days of hot weather coming up. I don't want to let the flowers down now. Because they're trying so hard. Despite everything, they're trying so hard!

And I think of it in the early evening as I walk to the mailbox for a late pick up of today’s mail. The moon is out, the air is still summer warm. The colors are tremendous, though no longer gentle or even fresh. They’re early fall yellow and deep, dusty green.

Ed’s biking tonight. I turn on the Convention and eat a fried egg with baked cauliflower. And tomatoes, with Lee’s cucumbers on the side. And sip an Aperol spritz.

school

The day is not mine anymore, it’s theirs – it belongs to the students and much of what I say and do stems from this basic fact: today, the orientation for new law students begins.

So yes, I’m on the porch with Ed eating breakfast, but I’m hurrying...

...and I rev up Rosie quickly, very quickly, because I can’t be late. Ah, the familiar spin past the very placid lakes (taken from the seat of my old girl, so forgive the distortions)...

...and after a day at school, I’m back on the porch with Ed. Etc...

 

... and still, we talk about students. I'm not  writing, not planting, not any of that. Students. And what’s good to consider for the semester before me and what’s less good and all this takes time, even as at the end of the day, all I remember is that I talked a lot and wrote little. There are days like that.

In the evening, Ed and I ride his Honda, out in the cool breezes of a gorgeous summer (it's still summer!) night, out to a tennis court – that one in the forest at the side.

To the (terrific) commenter who said – hey, maybe it’s your shoes, I offer you this photo of our game today. I took heed and shed my imperfect shoes.

The game was not better not worse than others. And still, it’s always deliriously fun and funny and on these cooler cloudy evenings, I think I am so lucky that after work, I get to have this (from the seat of Ed's Honda):

As for supper? Well, we have all those garden cherry tomatoes! So, salad with plenty of them (and cucumbers from Farmer Lee and chives from the gardens and spinach from somewhere) and eggs with oyster mushrooms. I know. It’s a weekly standby. But a good one.