Category: Vignette

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.

It is SNOWING!!!!

Today, in balmy VA, I drove with my windows rolled down. 57 degrees, the sun was shining and all the world was whispering Spring. Late in the day, with dark clouds, wind, and thunder a brimming cold front made the temperature plummet.

Still, who has time to think of snow?

We had a lot of homework to be done, stories to read, dinner to be made. Each task completed, I thought, “Thank Goodness, one step closer to the warmth of my bed.” As the night worn on, my toes grew cold without their brightly colored socks. The kids drifted off, one by one. The house grew still and quiet. Downstairs I padded, turning off lights.

And then I saw it, a thin blanket of white on my yard. Snow. I peeked out the door, it was still falling, a soft tinkling whisper in the night. On my outstretched palm it fell like feathers of ice. One child was still wandering our halls,

“Look, it’s snowing” I whispered.

“Oh, snap!” She said.

We both know it could be gone by morning, with our Lady Virginia’s fickle weather patterns. But, right now, tonight, my world has turned white, and I will sleep like the land under that soft, feather blanket, my mind resting in the quiet joyful knowledge: It is snowing.

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

I Long for Snow

It’s difficult to breathe, today. The winter cold has got me. Sore throat, watery eyes, sneezing, coughing, aching. I’m starting to sound like that commercial. I feel insulted by this cold, coming so soon after the crash. Hasn’t my body been through enough? I could forgive it, I think, if only we had snow.

That’s the trouble with living in Virginia, snow is almost mythical. Because it actually does snow once every few years, it makes this myth compelling. If it never snowed, I could give up and forget about pristine walks through the blanketed silence, my over-sized boots making the first prints on the virgin road. When it is that quiet in the world, my mind takes on an easy peace. I walk and watch the snow flakes fall, drifting unhurried through the skeletal branches, falling toward the rest of their mates waiting quietly on this earth; each flake unique when you catch it in your palm, and study it quickly before it melts away.

When I was little I lived in Colorado. Snow was a given there. We got blizzards, where you risked not making it home if you were even a few miles down the road from where you lived. The light was blinding off that white mass of ground, with a barren bowl of blue sky overhead and without the looming trees to block the glare.

In my new native home, the trees huddle under the white coverlet, a sheltered canopy, adding to the hush of winter. I have friends who live in Michigan and Chicago who will say they would happily give me some of their snowfall to spare their backs, bent from shoveling, and their ice-chapped faces, and their bone-cold way of living through the winters of the North.

Still, I long for snow. No matter what they tell me of hardship, and having to wear too many coats and scarfs, hats, boots, and gloves. There is an angel deep inside me, just waiting for her patch of white, and my willingness to lie down on that plain bedding and allow her to be born.

Through all this winter’s cold, I long for snow.

Things That Go Bump in the Road

Things That Go Bump in the Road

We were late. All four kids were rushed out of the house by two harried parents and into the Ford Expedition. My husband was driving. Our eighteen year old, a fourth member of our dance quarto, had gone ahead of us in his little Toyota. The other two dancers, our nine year old and I, were dressed in black skirts and stockings, ready to skip to the Irish reel and jig. We had been practising for 10 weeks and this was to be one of my daughter’s first performances.

Life does not always go as planned.

Our twelve year old daughter had left her purse at a cousin’s house so we had to make an extra stop on the way. It had snowed the night before, sugar dusting all of Virginia with less than an inch of fluffy, white powder. By the time we were on the road, just after noon on Sunday, it was nearly forty degrees and a bright, clear sunny day.

No remnants of the first winter snowfall remained on the road as we drove to the top of the hill.

Getting the purse had added pressure. We were only minutes behind schedule, but that was enough for us to be going at a steady clip heading down the long hill. Not speeding—it’s impossible to exceed the limit on those winding roads—but moving along quite nicely in an attempt to make it to the recital on time, just cruising on a Sunday on a road we knew well and had driven over a thousand times in twenty-five years in all kinds of weather.

The eldest had their i-pod on and was reading, settling in for the hour-long drive. The two little ones were laughing and messing around with each other. The middle daughter was sorting through the recently retrieved purse and I was inhaling my salad in the front seat, trying to fuel-up for our dance performance.

Life; busy and hectic as usual. No sense of foreboding, no brilliant flash of insight, my only thought when I saw the ice on the road was for my son, driving ten minutes ahead of us. We were in a four-wheel drive, he was just in that little Toyota.

My husband swore as we hit the front edge of the first ice patch and reached down to make sure we were in all-wheel drive. We were, but it wouldn’t do us any good.

We hit the second patch and he knew we were in trouble. He turned into the skid as we began to slide. I imagine we were going about 40 miles per hour but we hit the ice on a steep down-slope and picked up speed as we careened off the right hand side of the road, dropped into a ditch and headed straight for a set of mail-boxes.

I thought, “We’re going to hit those mailboxes.” And I remember the feeling of horror and dismay, knowing we were going to have an accident and no way to prevent it.

That was the moment everything went hay-wire.

We only clipped the mail boxes. Our trajectory changed. I closed my eyes just before we slammed into the boxes—I’m a horrid chicken at times like this—when I opened them, we were airborne. We had careened at high speed back across the road, hit a culvert, where a pipe went under the driveway, and sailed over the gravel lane. We hit railroad ties lining the drive on the other side and sent one flying thirty-feet into a field. We crashed landed through a fence, plowed straight over a wooden post that bent like a toothpick. It didn’t slow the truck at all. Ahead, in the field, we could see the tree coming. Eyes wide open, this time, I watched as we barrelled towards it. There was no way to avoid that tree, no time to think, or even react before we hit. I could see doom looming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The impact came with a force I was not familiar with, not from falling off a dozen different horses. It started in my low back and ricocheted all up my spine. My head flung forward and my chin hit my chest. I know now why they call it whiplash. My husband and daughter in the driver’s side both screamed in pain. We had stopped, but to what? He shouted, “Don’t anybody move! Stay exactly still!” Immediately, I turned to look at the kids, feeling the strange looseness in my neck and back. They were all staring back at me, eyes wide with shock and pain. All of them awake, alive. Two started crying.

I knew we were supposed to stay put, I had had my CPR training, but I looked back to the front and saw the mangled hood of the truck. My husband was shouting for a cell-phone. There were four in the truck, somewhere. I began frantically looking for mine. It had been charging in my cup-holder but I couldn’t find it. I traced the cord and pulled it from the floor, handed it to my husband. I looked back up at the crumpled front end.

“We’re getting out of here.” I said.

I don’t know what makes a vehicle explode, but I was not willing to wait and see if ours would. I got out, moving with difficulty and had the kids get out, looking them over as they left. Our little boy was bleeding on his lips. I took the edge of his shirt to wipe the blood. Slowly, we climbed the hill and the kids sat on the remaining rail-road tie. By then, my husband had stopped someone on the road who actually had a cell-signal—my phone didn’t—and they called the rescue squad. He also called my sister, an RN.

I looked down at my kids, all crying and shivering in the brisk wind. I took off my coat and wrapped it around the nine year old, wrapped my scarf around the twelve year old. My husband came over and looked at me. We knew how lucky we were,

“It’s good they’re all crying.” He said, “It means they’re all alive.”

“My feet are cold.” My littlest one said. I looked down, he was missing a shoe.

“Mine, too.” The nine year old was missing both of hers.

I noticed my feet were also cold, both of my shoes were gone as well. Where were our shoes? I hobbled back down to the car and found them. I didn’t know you could hit something so hard it would knock your shoes off. One of mine was jammed up under the dashboard where the impact had driven part of the engine into the car. It was a while later that I realized my shin was bleeding and I had a bone-bruise as a result of the engine’s movement.

The EMT’s arrived and put collars on the older four of us and hauled us off in two ambulances on back-boards. The littlest two children seemed to have escaped nearly unscathed, and went home with my RN sister, to be checked out later by our Family doctor.

In the end, we have five cases of whiplash with a lot of pain and stiffness during any kind of movement. My husband was the most gravely hurt with a herniated disc in his lower spine as well as a small laceration to his scalp.

This week, for me, has been a dazed blur, partly due to the combination of pain-killers and muscle relaxers they prescribed for me, mainly due to a kind of numb gratitude. I didn’t know I could feel so grateful. I feel as if I am living in a dream-world, or walking on a cloud. Just the sound of their voices and the sight of my husband and children fills me with an intense, stunned love.

I don’t know why we were so lucky, why all of us were spared. It isn’t easy to total an Expedition. The tree was twelve inches in diameter. We hit with such force, we uprooted it, yet, in essence, we all walked away. I know one day, my name will be called and I will leave this earth to join my maker. I know one day, we will all be called. “Why not now?” is a question that has no answer, yet I can’t help asking.

In the end, I suppose, it just wasn’t our time.

(Photo by Nataraja Bertram)

Put the Book Down

I have a very dear friend who has been under attack recently by chickenheads who didn’t like what he had to say on immigration. While deeply sad for him, I could not understand what it was that was making these attackers so upset. If they didn’t like what they were reading, simply put down the book. Don’t read that one, then another one, and another, working yourself into a hateful frenzy, looking for more reasons to despise someone you barely know.

Put the book down.

We have freedom to avoid anything that causes us distress. We don’t even have to think thoughts that are worrisome, anxiety-producing, or anger-building. If you don’t like what you are reading, put the book down. Not every word was written to reach all ears. In the same way that I have faith that the words I am writing were meant to be written, I have equal faith that the ones who are meant to read them will find access. In this world view, I suppose the attackers were meant to feel angry, hurt, or out-of-control. He got some pretty nasty e-mails. I know because I read them. They accused him of being exactly the opposite of what I had found him to be. They said he lied. He is one the most honest writers I have ever read. They said he had the story all wrong. He was there, he lived it from both sides of the angry border. For him, these words gave him strength, made him stronger. Through fire, they honed him and made him more into what he was meant to be. For the chickenheads? Who knows?

Life lessons like this are not painless, but my friend, in his honest wisdom, sent this quote to me and I think it says it best:

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything and anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you

–David Whyte

We may not like the chickenheads, the ones who would attack us for who we are, but even this bright burning brings with it a gift. For me, on this day when I was attacked (possibly with justification) it has made me into something stronger, more determined to speak my mind, to stand tall and clear, flawed and flawless, as I am.

Over the Hills and Far Away

When I was a we’en, I ran like the wind, liking nothing better than the feel of my heart pounding, the rushing of blood through my veins. Through the forests and over the hills, gulping leaf and moss scented air–this alive–I reverted to the wild in me, to the voice that whispered the same soft rustling as the sun-tipped leaves. I drank the air and light and sound of this un-human world, sustenance and protection against the mundane life that I awoke to every morning.

This is how I survived my childhood and the pains I couldn’t bear. I ran them away, over hill and dale, letting the gasping of the effort blow them away.

But, we grow old and we grow slow and we no longer hear the wind that calls our name. Responsibility makes its weighty appearance. Age stomps in and demands decorum. We buckle and fold and forget the sunshine days.

Or do we?

Somewhere deep inside of me, on quiet nights, I can hear her wild howling–my wild miss–lurking in me still behind my many faces. Yesterday, like any other day, I drove the winding road home from work. The breeze snuck in my window and settled just under the edge of my skin. I put on workout clothes and stomped to the basement to lift weights. There was no room in the basement, a project had all the items from one locale leaking over into my exercise space. I dragged back up the stairs, longing for the rush of blood.

The door burst open and the wind blew in, “Run with me,” she said.

“I’m going for a walk,” I announced and of course they wanted to come.

Two tall lassie’s and two fine lads. We dressed in shorts and tank-tops, laced our shoes, and out we went…walking.

I didn’t know then that the wild in me had been born in my brood, but the hills knew their names, and called to their swift feet, away they went, galloping, a herd of two-footers and I forged after them. We dodged the trees and leapt over rocks and fallen logs. They laughed like clear water and bobbed through the rippled light, fairy-beacons, frolicking, guiding me on the path back to myself.

And the wild one laughed and is laughing still.