Author: lakshmibertram

My first book, 'Choosing Waterbirth: Reclaiming the Sacred Power of Birth' was published in 2000. I continue to write, working on a number of projects, both fiction and non-fiction.

The Beauty of My Tomatoes

Last year, my garden died. This sad demise came from a combination of sparse rainfall resulting in near drought conditions and a busy life that gave me no time for weeding or watering. I didn’t get a single thing from my early spring planting, a situation I was determined not to repeat this year. My favorites plants to grow and the things I just can’t live without are tomatoes and basil. Utilizing reason, I decided to hedge my bets and plant even more of these than I had last year—thinking this way I could manage to keep one or two alive.

We had a banner rain year.

We had uncommonly cool, often overcast conditions.

I’m sure all that organic compost also had an effect.

We grew a tomato hedge. It is 20 feet long, nearly five feet tall and practically throws tomatoes at you when you walk by. We have been eating buckets of tomatoes for six weeks, now, and there is no sign of slow-down in tomato growth on the vines. We’ve had fresh salsa, fresh pasta sauce, tomato and bean salad, we have roasted them, braised them and finally—when I realize we were never going to be able to eat them—I blanched and froze them. The lower foliage of this hedge is made up of my sixteen basil plants. Recently, I picked and processed an entire trash-bag full of basil! In addition to the many bags of frozen tomatoes that will lend themselves to sauces, soups, and pots of chili, we will be eating pesto all winter long!

I never expected such an explosion. It has occasionally been alarming to watch this hedge grow. But picking them and popping them into my mouth fresh off the vine is one of my favorite summer pleasures. In honor of my tomatoes, I wrote the following poem. I hope you enjoy this journey into my garden life and kitchen. I would love to hear about yours.

The Beauty of My Tomatoes

I wish I could describe the beauty
of my tomatoes
adequately
so you could see them
sitting

In the bamboo steaming basket
above
my black granite counter-top

Oblong and bright red or
pale orange with streaks of green or
yellow ones
perfectly round and tiny as a dime

Light from the window
falls over them
brushes their skins
with gold

Were I a photographer
I would not have to
struggle
to explain

That these are not my big tomatoes
those beef-steaks sit
in round legions
like bright buns rising
on a lime-green dish towel

These are my other tomatoes
my cherrys and romas
tumbled together
in the straw-colored basket

I pick one to eat
the still-life altered
by my desire
for sweetness and
the taste the summer on my tongue

They are humble in size
but not in brilliance
they sit boldly in the fading light
urging me to eat

I wish I could bring
you
here

Into this moment

Where a tomato bursts
ripe and fresh
between my teeth

So you could see
with your two eyes
and taste
with your own lips
the beauty of my tomatoes

HOT Virginia

Virginia in August is like stepping into a steam room. With 95% humidity or above being common and a blazing sun shining regularly, the water molecules themselves heat up. They cling, a slick coating over your skin. Sweat drips from your body if you spend even a few minutes out of doors—say—in walking to your car.

My way of surviving such heat is to minimize all time spent outside. Of necessity, I walk from my air-conditioned house to my air-conditioned car, then from my air-conditioned car to my air-conditioned office. This would be a perfect system if my office wouldn’t keep changing temperatures.

I work in a rambling building that had rooms added out of necessity as the family-owned company grew through generations. Thinking more of useable space, and less of aesthetics or climate control, additions were tacked-on as needed. The problem with tacking things on is you end up with some interesting heat/cooling situations. For instance, I share a thermostat with my boss’s office which is located directly over-head.

He and I both have rooms with a lovely window view overlooking the south side of the building. I look out over the trash cans, he looks out onto the roof of the Annex, but they do let in that well-loved natural light and, by consequence, the broiling summer heat.

It is a well-known scientific fact that heat accumulates in higher elevations. When my boss’s office gets unbearably hot, he comes downstairs to where the thermostat is located and adjusts the air. He doesn’t do this often, just when things get overly toasty in the rooms above. The problem is, in order for it to be bearable upstairs, it has to be near artic conditions down here, effectively freezing the basement dwellers. The only way to balance it out is to open the back door and let all that natural heat wash in.

All in all, this wouldn’t be a bad system except for two things. First, due to the private nature of what I do, I often have my office door shut. This keeps private conversations private, but also allows for window-heated air to accumulate in my room. To solve this problem, I occasionally open the door and skim some cool air from the hallway or the office next door. This leads to the second problem. If my office is hot from the south-heating sun, you can bet the upstairs office is hotter. By the time I open my door, the whole cycle has started and finished; the boss has become too hot, the thermostat has been lowered, my co-workers teeth have started chattering and they have thrown open the back door. When I finally get around to opening my door, hoping for relief from my baking office, the sweltering, clinging, moisture-thick outside heat comes pouring in!

It makes me wonder, why, exactly do I live in Virginia?

Bats, bats, and more bats

These days I always check my office first thing for bats. There was the one on Monday hanging over my door jamb. Sound asleep and tiny as a field mouse, he was sleeping off whatever fun he’d had the night before. On Tuesday there was one in the hall, nestled in a corner of the slate, nose to the crack. I would guess, like some of the humans in this building, he was pretending he wasn’t there. On Wednesday, I was bat-free, but there were three in the office down the hall and on Thursday, I spun in my chair and almost stepped on the fallen rodent, who was looking at me with baleful, sleepy eyes—like tiny black beads—as if I was at fault for disturbing his sleep.

Our Purchaser called the exterminator, who came out to investigate the problem. They poked about in rafters and ceilings and discovered there is an inch of guano (odorous bat-poo) adding extra insulation to our ceiling. Based on this, it was decided we have a bat-infestation.

You can’t kill bats in Virginia, they are a protected form of wildlife. I personally have nothing against them. They eat mosquitoes and other nasty flying bugs, of which we are abundant, and dart and dive through the dusk-hued sky. I love to watch them as they send out their radar beams and pick up the trail of bugs through sound. Their flight is so erratic, you’re often sure they are going to fly right into your face, but they swoop off at the last moment, lifting the hair from your brow with the wind of their wings.

On Friday I got the best bat yet. He was nestled in my coffee-cup, little fingers latched onto the edge. I wondered if he was trying to wrest one more flight from the evening by sucking up the last drips from my mug. All in all, he was the easiest to take outside. I placed a request for employment verification over the top, pressed gently with my hand, and carried him out the door.

I always wish them well as they look groggily up at me when I tip them into the bushes. Their six-inch wing-span has a fine-meshed, lacy pattern. They hobble and hop away, screeching quietly. I can tell from their complaints they don’t like me very much.

Toward the end of the week, our expert had hatched a plan. As it would happen, we’re in the middle of breeding season. Those bats in my office, including the coffee-drinker, weren’t boy bats at all. They were the female bats, apparently worn out from breeding, they were too tired to search for a proper place to sleep. During this most exciting time of the year, they get a little nutty. They squeeze into our halls at night through an opening as small as a ¾ inch gap and have free-breeding parties. The Purchaser is not amused. He is the one the local sheriff’s office calls when the breeding-bats set off the alarm system. He’s shown up dozens of times, riffle and flash-light in hand but, the bats? They’re not impressed.

We can do nothing until the season is over. With breeding comes babies which are now inhabiting our attic in tiny, squeaking droves. Our eventual solution will be to clean out the guano and board up all the holes to keep all future bats from nesting in our building. We can’t do that until the young ones have grown and gone. For the time-being all we are left with is coming in each morning knowing for certain there will be bats both above and below.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge

I think it’s in the way the light falls, angling through the trees, hitting everything with a bright touch that is so alluring. Approaching Stonehenge, we traverse rolling plains. This morning gentle wind whips the summer wheat, and flips the leaves over. They look like schools of silver fish swimming in a blue sky. I have always wanted to see Stonehenge. With hippies for parents, I’ve know about this rocky formation for as far back as I can recall. What fascinates me and drives me most crazy is that no one knows for certain what it is, how it got here, and what the original purpose was behind its being constructed. The stones have remained, worn down by wind and rain, but the burning urges of the humans who created it have been entirely lost to the years that have passed. We’re left with only speculation; all that amounts to is scientific rumor.

Like all of England, the sky in the south is low and changing. Clouds roll over in fluffy groups, looking lofty from this vantage point, but I dropped down through them on the way back to earth and could see from the plane window how very close to the ground they were. They’re temperamental things, these clouds of England. A whole day of them may pass without even a single drop of rain. Alternately, it could be bright and blue and the clouds as white and airy as cotton wool and next thing you know, it’s a downpour.

We get hot coffee in the refreshment stand just outside the gates. It’s a funny thing about the British, you can find a pub, or six, in every small town, but coffee shops are reserved for shopping malls, airports, and, happily, busy places of interest. They also sell ‘rock’ scones, cucumber sandwiches, and brie, basil and tomato subs. We’re not hungry. We had cider and oatcakes at the campsite this morning.

We’ve arrived early so we sip our drinks and wait for the gates to open. Six little birds flit about the fence posts reminding us of our children. We try to catch a picture of them, but two fly off. “That’s about right,” I say. One of ours has flow the coop already, and the next in line will as soon as he can get his wings under him. Back at home baby birds had just hatched in a nest just over porch light. Just before we left they were so big, they looked stuffed into that small, grassy cradle. “That’s how I feel.” Our nineteen year old commented.

Aside from the birds, there are large groups of people arriving by the bus-load. We sit and, without seeming to stare, try to guess nationalities. There is an entire cricket team, looking smart in their neat shorts and cardigans. There is nothing more British to me than the wearing of shorts with a cardigan. Another group hosts a tightly angled accent. Is it highlands Scottish? Irish? There is one young man wearing a black T-shirt with a skull and silver chains on it. He’s friendly despite this garb, and is the only one in the group who smiles at me. I know, were my girls with me, this would be the one they would remember. While I’m off to get another coffee, they all get up and leave and Neil realizes there are not, in fact, English speaking at all.

With the caffeine coursing, we walk through a short tunnel and come to Stonehenge. Due to literally thousands of years of human occupation, there are numerous places in England that are just as interesting, old, and historically significant as Stonehenge. I have visited cathedrals where they’ve been saying Mass since the eleventh century. I’ve been to Lindisfarne, that water-ringed Island where Christianity first landed in these parts. England, and I suppose all of Europe, is rife with historical sites and ancient structures. Even with all of that, there was something mystical about this monolithic, geometrical stone ring. With the plains rolling away in every direction, it sits all on its own as the center of this small world. At intervals the stones line up. On the solstice, the sun rises and sets through these gaps. I can hardly think that was accidental. I stand in the exact spot and look through the gap in the stones. I can feel the weight of the millions of eyes that have gazed just so before me. Like the ping of a tuning fork, I recognize the magic that is at play.

Exactly half-way around the structure, we feel the first few rain drops. Absorbed in the ear piece, detailing the imagined history of this place, I hadn’t noticed the sky had darkened and the wind had picked up. Within seconds, it’s pouring. Neil gallantly gives me his rain-jacket. He’s wearing a polar-fleece, I’m wearing cotton. We’re camping tonight so with no way to get things dry after this, he deems I will have the worst of this after the rainfall. We try to stick it out, to continue to stand on the open plain and marvel at the monolith. The rain wins out. By the time we reach the tunnel, my pants and shoes are soaked, I drip and my feet squelch on the stone walkway. We stop in at the gift-shop to pick up presents for the kids.

When we exit fifteen minutes later, the sky is again a bright blue.

Getting the Hay In (written May 20th)

It’s that bright kind of sunny day where you squint even in the shade and the entire country-side looks dipped in light. The blue sky harbors lazy white clouds and the bushy green trees harbor warbling birds. They never give me any advance warning, but there’s something in the air on a hay-day (maybe that fresh-cut hay smell) that let’s me know haying is just a phone-call away.

This time we’re shooting to get 150 bales to feed our livestock of two: one fat young painted Saddlebred, and one bony old Thoroughbred. Mostly, they’re pasture-pals, friends I can go to whenever I need a listening ear. I can depend on them to stand quietly while I complain and never argue or tell me the situation is my own fault. They’re just there, quietly crunching, swishing tails at the flies while the warmth of their hides permeates the air. I can lean back against that solid, living mass, and let all my problems slide away.

I can’t haul hay, anymore. After years of gloving up and tossing 60 pound bales onto trucks–as quick and tough as any of the men–now, my allergies won’t let me. I always did come away from a haying session pocked-marked with raised red welts on my arms, and a voice grown hoarse and (I thought) sexy from coughing. Really, it was hives from my allergic reaction to those lovely Northern Grasses. I can’t haul it, but I can still drive and fortunately for me, I managed to birth a strong, healthy, wonderfully helpful young man who came with me to hay today.

We drove to the field on dry, dusty roads, past where they were laying another field down. That deep green blanket would fade in the sun and be ready to tedder tomorrow, ready to bale the next day. Farther on, we wove past cows, stomping lazily in a lean-to, up over a knoll to where the hay field stretched out. Long rows were piled neat and the baler was churning away, rumbling and plunking as square bales popped out the back. They had three lines baled already, about fifty ready to haul. But, this was my son’s first go at driving a hay-laden truck; I wasn’t willing to push it. We’d load thirty-five bales, forty tops.

I drove down the lanes, he ran along beside me, as graceful as a gazelle, despite the fifteen pounds of muscle he has recently packed on through his weight-training sessions—pounds he’d be thanking God he’d worked hard to earn by the end of today. He loped along bare-foot because he’d been wearing sandals when we’d gotten the call. He had gloves in his truck, so at least his hands were safe. His feet, it seemed, would have to fend for themselves. He was faster than I had ever been and moved in smooth motion. He caught each bale, lifted it as I chugged slowly up in my diesel F350. Then, in one easy movement I could never have mastered, he tossed them into the truck bed. In moments like these you realize you have been kidding yourself; I never could load hay like any man, that was a dream born from a wanna-be.

I find I’m still a wanna-be. Only the strong memory of struggling for each asthmatic breath keeps me locked in the cab with the air-conditioner blowing. It’s hard to give up something you love so that you can stay alive and breathing. But, even without the exhausted, itching, back-rending, muscle defeating, exhilarating effort of actually loading the hay–I still love it.

He looks hot as he pulls off his T-shirt, climbs into the driver’s side of my truck, pops in his ears buds, cranks his i-pod, and drives my away. He’ll be back in an hour or two, after he’s unloaded into the barn and I’ll head back out to the field as a driver, a blessed break from the office-job where I’ll be working late, waiting in comfort for him to deliver each load to home. We’ll do this four times, and by the end of the night, he’ll be worn to the bone, sweating and itching, and too tired to lift his fork to eat and I’ll envy him for his youth, his strength, his health that all give him this ability to load the hay.

More than that, I’ll be grateful. I’ll remember this day forever as I know he will. He’ll remember it as the time he loaded one hundred and sixty-two bales of hay from the truck to the barn all on his own. I’ll remember it as the first time ever I didn’t lift a single bale while getting the hay in.

Who is that Girl, Again?

It’s funny how life likes to throw a curve ball, just to make sure you’re still paying attention in the game. This winter has been one of many challenges, beginning with hitting that tree in December and then just rolling from there. Whole weeks went by where I lived moment to moment because, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure if I would be easy breathing in the next. Asthma has a sneaky way of making a person come completely into the present. I stopped thinking ahead, stopped planning. I tagged the line, “…if I can breathe” to the end of every sentence, “Yes, we can go shopping on Sunday, if I can breathe.”

It came on me suddenly, even though the propensity had apparently always been there, lurking, for years. Asthma and Allergies, completely new, utterly unwelcome ways in which to define myself.

The trouble is, I do sit well with definitions I don’t like. If I have Allergies and am as highly allergenic as they say, my whole life could be cast in shadow: no more long walks through rippling fields, no more laying in the grass chewing on the long end of a stem, no more romping with the dogs, hauling hay for the horses, no more running over wooded paths unless the mold count is down. Stretched out before me, my new life looked like a desert, vast and wide and utterly empty of all the things green and beautiful, things I truly loved.

Indeed, it didn’t sit well. I had to ask, if not that wild nature girl, then who am I? If I can’t do those things I love, what can I do?

I looked deep into the darkest corner of my soul and found me sitting there, just as calm and peaceful as you please, sitting still and quiet in that close, cool darkness, all soaked up with the essence of me. That was when I knew, I can never be other than what I am. I’ve lived for forty years with all these things they now call Allergies and Asthma. Yes, I have had moments of highly atypical skin conditions, random joint swelling, abdominal irritability, headaches, pain, general irritability, and exhaustion. When the doctor asked my symptoms and I told him, he wondered why I hadn’t mentioned them to other doctors before. I had but they couldn’t find what was wrong with me and anyway, over time, “sick” became my normal.

Now, I have gone full circle, through normalcy, into pain, illness, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and now back to what I know as normal. I have a lot of allergies, according to my very reliable forearms. I could take that information and no one would blame me if I opted out off the natural world and chose instead to lock myself away in a plastic bubble. I might attain something like wellness if I did that, but what kind of a well would it be? Would I be happy? Would I have a life I actually wanted to live? Would I have love?

A recent study has proven vitamin D is highly effective in mitigating asthma and allergy symptoms. So effective, in fact, they are now recommending we allergenics not stay inside, theoretically safe in our plastic houses, but that we get outside, strip down as much as we dare, and let that hot sun soak into all the surfaces of our skin. When you haven’t been out in a while, the sun is like warm honey pouring over you. It is sensuously wonderful; it feels so good. And the soft murmuring of the leaves sounds like an endearment, as if they are rustling just for you.

I sat on my deck, having gotten the unofficial go-ahead to get out there and soak up some D and just looked at my natural world, the squirrels chasing each other irately through the branches, the butterflies drifting wonkily around the lilacs, those bright green leaves, bending and tipping waving at me in the breeze. I fell in love, in that punch-drunk kind of way that hits you sometimes. I could feel that thick, warm emotion coursing through me. All my aching muscles and even the blood in my veins relaxed. I settled deeper in my chair, and fell back in to wonder.

As every asthmatic will likely tell you, things trigger an attack. Once you learn what your triggers are, you can begin to get a grip on a very uncontrollable, often terrifying situation. One of my triggers is stress, if I get freaked out enough, you can bet I’m going to end of having trouble breathing. This was perfectly apparent during the day we took my daughter in for an emergency appendectomy. That’s some stress, I can tell you, having your daughter become violently ill, then rushing her to the hospital–one hour away– then having her operated on all within an eight hour period. This adventure began at eight in the morning, I stopped breathing normally by about two o’clock.

It makes you wonder, though, if you stop and think about it. If stress can have this great physiological impact, could not the opposite of stress work in reverse? Could sitting still, perfectly relaxed and deeply in love with anything at all make your lungs, as well as your heart, expand? It made me wonder and it made me make some solid decisions.

None of us ever know exactly how long we will have on earth and we are all given the glorious freedom to do what we wish with the time we do have. I could hole myself up in my house, make every person entering wash the pollen and dander and mold spores and dust mites off their bodies before hugging me, and keep my life pritinely sterile.

Or I could live, just as I always have, embracing every part of my world with two arms wide. I could inhale every moment of my life deeply. I could work myself to the bone in my garden and then sit, tipsy-in-love, letting all those good hormones work their magic.

In the end, in the very, very end, I have found, I’m just still me, same as I always was and I will do what comes naturally to me, what lets me remember deep peace and thick love.

I am wishing the same for you.

Peace, Love, and Blessings,

La

Spring Haiku

I’m in a writing group with all these amazing, talented writers. It’s intimidating. But, as my husband the Soccer Coach would say, “You don’t improve your skills on the pitch when you’re the best player in the game.”

Apparently, in Soccer (and in writing) we learn the most when dumped into a situation where we are surrounded by people stronger, faster, more talented, and better at doing whatever it is we love. I think I’m in the right place.

April is National Poetry Month. In honor of this wonderful written expression, me and my fellow group-mates have been writing Haiku, one a day for the entire month. Prior to April 1, I didn’t know much about Haiku. I still don’t know much, but I’m learning. It’s been ten days. Here are a few of my favorite Haiku. They’re short and sweet, abbreviated and vast. I love them.

Spring Haiku

#1
pattering rain-drops
staccato out my window
the heart-beat of Spring

#2
lady daffodil
curtsying in the garden
nods me good morning

#3
wind drops from blue sky
skips over the emerald fields
and turns them silver

#4
rain left the world fresh
black earth gives up sunshine scent
from each new flower

#5
impossible light
cascading through my window
lures me to play

#6
low, dark mountains rest
young hills frolic at their feet
learning to be wise

#7
what is that color
blended burgundy and gold
my shade of longing

#8
cherry tree blossoms
a hundred dainty fairies
flashing petticoats

#9
adolescent trees
stretch in sap-filled eagerness
reaching for the light

#10
wistful clouds adrift
pause in the powder blue sky
to watch the horses

The Sound of Snow

It snowed seven inches on Sunday night, surprising the heck out of me. We were going to the Zoo on Saturday. I had been watching the Saturday weather like an obsessed hawk all week–scanning the web-casts daily, trying to determine if a Zoo trip would be nuts from a purely weather standpoint.It was a little. 42 degrees and breezy, it wasn’t the best temperatures for gallavanting about, marveling at rare and unusual beasts. But, in my life, I have learned I had better strike while the iron’s hot–it cools off way too quickly when one thing, then another, then another comes along.

So, we went. I loved it, walked for miles, ended up foot-sore and bone-chilled by the end of the day. I got to see a shrew–which is the cutest little creature. I cannot understand it–where did the reference to an awful woman come from? Shrews are just as cute as cute can be. Call me a shrew and I’ll throw my arms around you and kiss you for the compliment.

We drove home through rain and mixed snow, but it had cleared away by morning and I was looking forward to my day. I had a chocolate cake date with my girlfriend, Grace. She makes a mean chocolate cake.

It was rumor when first I heard of it—“Rumor has it, we’re going to get 8-10 inches of snow.”

“Suuuurrreee, we are.” I knew better than to believe. I had suffered many dissappointments in our sunny, warm VA. Snow in March? Paaalease.

Four o’clock pm it started, large moist flakes, bits of shredded coconut, dropping onto the dark brown earth below, frosting the grass with the first hints of the whipped-cream topping that was to come. Oh, wait, now I’ve slipped into thinking about the cake, the chocolate one, the one I didn’t have because this other white stuff fell thick around, the one Grace and Clarke were forced to eat for me. Thanks for the sacrifice, guys. :>

Are you wondering? Did I go out in my snowfall? Did I do all those things I imagined I would? Not all, life just doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, when the moment comes, it is enough to watch your children making snow-angels–in their bathing-suits, I might add.

I did go for my walk, though. Some things I can’t resist. I had to hear that sound, be part of the falling silence. I stood in my driveway and looked up, let the flakes fall on my face, magic from the earth and sky consumed me, I closed my eyes and heard that longed-for sound of snow.

Photograph of snow in trees by Sam Van Dyke. For one time use for “lakshmibertram.com,” all rights retained by Sam Van Dyke.