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Remember a while back, I mentioned this great writer’s group I am lucky enough to be part of? We’ve put together an e-zine: The Hummingbird Review.

Come by and check us out. My section is called Home Fires and I would love to hear what you think about our venture.

http://www.thehummingbirdreview.com/

Peace and Blessings,
La

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.

I saw it this morning in the lean of the sky. That bold sun hid behind white ruffled clouds and shot razor-beams across the pale blue. The trees are whispering to each other, stretching their long-bowed fingers, bud-tipped, making ready to grasp the light of day.

Last night a young black bear loped across the road in front of my red Ford F-350 crew cab pickup (farewell tight-turning Expedition–I drive a monster, now.)

“A bear!” I exclaimed, scaring the living daylights out of my daughter, who tossed her i-pod and clutched at her heart,

” God, mom, are you trying to kill me?”

Of course not, I just wanted her to see the bear.

As if the green haze across the lawn weren’t enough, as if that warm wind moving with easy speed through the undergrowth did not tell the tale, certainly that young bear, lean and dark from his winter sleep is clear evidence of the coming Spring.

I never got my great snowfall, but did have one peaceful evening when the world turned white. I cannot say I enjoyed my winter. Though our Christmas was truly lovely, the tree, the asthma, and now the allergies were not.

It makes me wonder, though, what will my Spring be like? This year I know what the blowing pollen will do. All those years and all that illness, I never knew.

I am allergic.

Does it really matter what to? To the natural world, to trees and grass, to weeds, to microscopic mold spores that dwell on underbellies, that thrive in the dampness of my southern climate, to dust, to all sorts of things.

My body is a riot of objection, it thinks near everything is an invader, it marshalls the troops, hauls out the guns, vows to win the war! My nose twitches, my eyes water, my skin gets creepy crawly, my knees swell, my stomach aches.

As the fighting continues, I grow more and more weary until getting out of bed to make coffee seems more effort than I can manage. All because of allergies. At least I have a name for my foe, for that low-lying demon who has haunted me all my life. At least I live in a time and place where we have such things as antihistamines and albuterol. Fexofenadine, my faithful new friend.

I am always pensive in February, peering out from the shadows of the cold, dark nights and the heaviness of the flu season. As the sun stretches itself across the sky, holding on to two more minutes each day and the inevitable Spring crawls close, I wonder, I really do; What will this Spring be like?

Children are not very forgiving, at least not of the flaws of their parents. It was a good idea to begin with or so I thought. They harass me, incessantly, on long drives, on slow evenings, on snowy days and dark, close nights in the confines of our camping tent, to tell them stories. They don’t want the store-bought kind, the ones some other writer has struggled to create. They want me to tell them tales off the top of my head. They give me a theme, “Mom, tell us a story about a sea-turtle and a jelly-fish.” “Tell us one about a mountain lion and a squirrel.” They’re nothing if not imaginative. And so, I sigh, close my eyes, and begin.

A tale told by the seat of one’s pants is not an ordinary kind of story. Strange things happen when you allow your imagination to run free. There is no editing, no careful choice of word. The force of the story moves itself, the unexpected abounds. I listen carefully with my inner ear. In that slight pause before I speak, I grasp the tale from the nothingness and weave it into being.

I find, I like these rambling, unpredictable tales, so I decided to write them down. Why not put them into books of my own? Other children might like to read them. Another struggling writer-mom might be grateful to be able to read a story.

I don’t have a lot of writing time, like most artists, squeezing it in between dinner and home work, soccer practice and the weekend chore-list, between kisses goodnight and the pull of sleep. Writing these stories was a good idea, but it’s hard to recall it all to words in a single sitting.

Advice to all writers: Do not read your children an unfinished story. They do not respond positively, at least my kids don’t.

“Read the end.” The 7 yr old said. I had kept him and his 9 yr old sister completely captivated right up to the point where the old man was bobbing in the black, black sea.
“I can’t read it, I haven’t written it yet.” I was thinking of course they would understand.
“This is the worst story ever.” He glares at me from his warm blankets. “It doesn’t have the end!”
“Yeah,” His nine-year old sister agrees, “It doesn’t even have the mermaids, yet.”
“It needs the rest.” he says.

Of course it does! I just haven’t written it yet.

Note to self: Children do not make good literary guinea pigs.

There are many risky moments on the rocky road to achieving a dream. Moments when you could throw up your hands, turn tail, and crawl back into the safety of your quiet cave. Should I be flattered or horrified? They loved the story, loved it enough to be very upset that it hadn’t been finished. I feel obligated to finish it now. Before, it was just the hint of idea, the pale, frail glimmering of opportunity. Something I could set aside, work on at leisure. Last night, fate made an edict. To save face with my kids, I must finish the story. Weary from work, disconsolate with my minuscule time to write, I worked on that story long past the time when my babies lay dreaming, till my eyes were grainy and my vision blurred.

Shhhhh, don’t tell them, but “Tell Me a Story of the Old Man and the Sea”, is nearly done.

I’ll let you know if they like it.

Why do I love Autumn in Virginia?

On the 6th of November, it is sixty-six degrees of sun-filled sky. The morning breeze sends orange and red leaves skittering across the pavement. Clouds of birds fly over my building heading further South. The steady stream of diving, dipping, chirping life lasts for 25 minutes. How many thousands could that be, making their merry way to sunnier shores? I stand staring up, open-mouthed, until I realize what is falling from the sky, polka-dotting the cars in the lot.

The evidence of fall is here, in the mama and baby bear who wander through the pasture, four eerie eyes, bright in the flashlight beam. They set the horses to stamping and snorting and send my daughter’s heart skipping into triple beat. They were merely looking for a place to hibernate. “Not in our barn!” She says.

Autumn sports are played in the brisk, chill mornings, we stand screaming and shivering in hats and scarves, fingers gripping hot coffee, the steam swirling into empty air. By game’s end, we are in shirt-sleeves, cold coke pressed to forehead, while the sun seeks to turn our skin to the same russet of the leaves.

Autumn is a kind friend in VA, bringing simple gifts of the full fall harvest, the colored leaves, and lazy sunshine. The cold nights cast a frosted glow on every morning, but roses still bloom in our front garden, slim and regal, floating on their green-coated stalks. Past the weighty, viscous heat of summer, and before the bitter ice-rains come, fall rests, offering a lull in the passing seasons, time to pause, to watch the birds and reflect on nothing more than beauty, simplicity, and the natural wonder of our world.

Some mornings when sleep tries to shake itself from my brain, I just want to forget the world and sink ever deeper into nothingness, to remain in my dreamlands, where colors are brighter and the vague, sweet longings beneath the surface of the day, become my bold reality.

I fly in my dreams. I love the feel of rushing that sweeps me head to foot as I realize I can thrust myself off the ground and into the great, dream-sky. I dip and dive over hills and swaying branches, a dream-wind sliding over me, and look for things I never let myself have in reality; waterfalls, open fields, horses that change color.

Sometimes I see you in my dreams, and wake with you beneath my skin, closer now than we would ever be on Earth. In the clear waters of my dream-mind, I take on the colors of your soul, and wear them like an inside cloak, a talisman against the waking day. Though time may pass, and distance wear forever on, in my dreams, you are with me ever still.

10/23/2008

I am writing this from my 8th floor hotel room. My ears are cold from the wind, my hair blown out like a frizzy halo. It is not beach weather. When I walked back from the gift store having bought presents for my precious children left at home, there was not a soul on the beach. I could see a mile in either direction. No one was there but me and the gulls. I think, maybe, even they thought I was crazy.

What is it about the ocean wind that blows the mind clean? Even my thoughts take on a fine-edged clarity. A pale lovely woman with a faded holey shirt, tattooed, rough around the edges and a handsome young black man helped me pick my presents, staying open five extra minutes so I could find something for the five kids at home. They were the solid workers, the ones who stay on after the seasonal rush, stuck by reasons all their own in the barren tourist town, helping the occasional traveler, like myself, who is only here on business.

The buildings along the seaside were gray and drab without the colored towels and swim suits, without rainbow umbrellas, and a hundred different shades of skin, coolers with cool drinks, lawn chairs and beach toys to distract from their blocky solid stance, the first stone barrier against the sea. In one room, a Christmas tree stood, its twinkling bright lights the only thing to be seen. In another, dark shapes moved across the window, ghostly, silent people thinking lonely thoughts behind the glass.

For me, this great quiet solitude is entirely new. Never before in my life has my time been wholly my own to manage. No dinner to prepare, or homework to complete, no stories, complaints, no fights to break up. I miss my noisy brood, but find this vast emptiness of duty to be other-worldly. I am my own self and nothing else. Time is mine to do with as I choose, and so I sit here and write and sip hot-soy-chocolate, legs curled under me, listening to the hum of the heating unit as it tries to thaw out my ears. There is a waterbirth article I need to write that will be translated into Russian. My fingers know the keys and my mind hums like the heater in anticipation. Words slide their way through my wind-clear mind and lay themselves onto this page. And so, in pure, sweet contentment, I am writing.