Indeed, it is the end of December. Blueberries have been out of season for months here in the Northwest. Yet they are on sale at the local supermarket. The label says they’re from Peru and Chile. Again the question and thought arise: How has the world changed so much in the last decade? I will spare you my theories about that, I am working on clarity and not blaming!
Successes this year? Getting healthier, being more patient with my pup, who is now 2, helping my family, scads of work done on my home, walking regularly. And getting my book completed and published! Up on Amazon, so now the ongoing marketing.
Dmitri Matheny, my book, and I at the Anacortes Library in October.
A piece of clarity recently delivered was how the book, my pup, and the myriad of issues with my house have distracted me from my music. A couple of recent gigs and one coming up have brought back that missing element to my life. And it feels good to have it back, a void that I had not noticed until it said, “Hey, no practice, no gigs! No practice and your playing sucks!” Oh yeah, and I forget stuff! There is a richness and a being present when I play music, even practicing scales.
Practicing gratitude daily has also become part of my life. My opportunities, my freedom, my view of Admiralty Inlet, having a carport, my pup, caring and supportive people in my life, my adult children’s stability and families, my return to lap swimming. Oh yeah, and blueberries in winter.
All the best to you in 2023, it portends to be an abundant, productive year. Thank you for reading.
I’m back. What? You didn’t notice I was gone? Sure you did.
Where was I? Overwhelmed and discouraged when the spammers found my webpage and infested it. Details and drama will be skipped over – I’m back and just watched a large seagull swoop past my window. All is good. What have I discovered in the last few months? For one, that dandelions are smarter than I am. Yes, spring is here and I am back to mowing my lawn after four months of not doing so. I mow over the dandelions with their sunburst flowers on long stems. Within 48 hours, the blossoms are back and right next to the ground, too low for my mower to reach them. Who knew dandelions had such survival instincts?
For another, raccoons sit in the fir trees and watch what’s going on around them. Why does this matter? Because when I take my boisterous, curious Siberian husky/ German shepherd pup outside for his morning business, the raccoons seem to think he can climb the tree after them. They scurry down and take off running. So does my pup. Completely unheeding my commands to come back to me. So I am off chasing him up the street. Sometimes in my jammies.
Some of my foxgloves. Photo by MDessein
Oh yeah, and that having a boisterous, curious pup determines about twenty hours of my day. Is he a good soul, smart, affectionate, and non-aggressive? Absolutely, yet he being my first dog, I had no idea what I was getting into. What a teacher he has been. I’ve learned to rein myself in, practice patience, and be consistent. Things I thought I already knew.
I was also reminded I am a strong, tenacious soul. A computer tech person told me that dealing with spammers is a fact of life nowadays. Okay, I will prevail. Note to you wondrous subscribers, please stay subscribed. If you are in the ‘notify of comments’ list, if you unsubscribe from that and get on the regular subscribers list, you will not get the spammer comments.
My book will be published on Amazon in June! Yay-hoo! More on that soon. It will be a collection of my amazing blogs and essays. I will be contacting everyone I can to support me with my book. I am excited.
Sunset at Admirals Cove. Photo by MDessein
What else have I learned? That people do what they do, based on their own experiences and choices. That I can mostly manage myself, nobody else (even my dog!). That deer don’t eat foxgloves or lupine. That as a parent of adult children, it is usually best to wait to be asked for my opinion. That bald eagles make the most amazing squawk. That I am grateful for every day. And you.
Really? Sometimes the actual instance is more accurately described as “What was I thinking?” “If I had known this, I wouldn’t have ____.” “What? No one told me that.” “If only I had _____ first.”
My son was telling his beloved partner about his mom’s adventures – listing how I had lived in Italy, walked on the Great Wall in China, gone to Chichen Itza, graduated from college at age 46, performed at scads of open mics, done a weekly radio show for years, and worked with incarcerated teens.
Adventures? I hadn’t thought of it that way, yet he was right.
When my remarkable daughter, super son-in-law, and I were celebrating my daughter’s successful surgery at a Mexican restaurant, I ordered the cactus salad as I had never heard of such a thing. I didn’t like it.
“Mom, you always do that – try new things and half the time you don’t like them.”
I started to dispute that, then realized she was right. I had not seen that about myself. I realized I like to try new things, yet then saw I don’t want to miss out on anything.
As you can see, I am getting to the synopsis of my life: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Wonder pup, Lyric
I have a five month old puppy asleep at my feet, his name is Lyric. Hopefully, he will sleep for a while longer. I had NO idea the constant vigilance, consistency, and patience required with a puppy. At this point, you can imagine I have revisited the first paragraph questions several times in the last 3 weeks since Lyric came to live with me. He is a sweet, smart and patient soul. Thank goodness.
Ten months ago, I had enough of where I was living, so I did a ton of work, spent so much more money than I anticipated, sold my condo, and moved to where my heart called me: near the ocean. Yee gods and little fishes. Courage? Yup. Risk? Oh yeah.
I didn’t think about it in those terms until I found these rocks. My dear and wondrous harp teacher, Harper Tasche, had a bowl of engraved rocks at his wedding some years back, inviting all attendees to take one or two, which I did. I had long since put them away and found them as I was packing and sorting in the prep for my huge move.
The many challenges of this move have been intimidating. The unexpected issues have been overwhelming. The list of expenses has grown. The extent of needed repairs and unmaintained items seems endless. Yet, I followed my pursuant heart. As I have done so often in my life, even without having the words for it. (Did I mention sleeping on the floor of the Luxembourg airport one night in November while waiting for a flight, and the next night being locked outside and huddling up on the cold pavement until the airport reopened in the morning?)
All righty then, Lyric and I just got back from a walk on the beach, he ran zoomies in and out of the waves, I picked up a couple agates, and listened to the waves as they foamed up on the sand.
Snohomish River & Trees. photo by Mary Dessein Walking along 1st Street recently, where I lived from age five until age twenty, I heard the huge cottonwoods and alders, before I really saw them. Yes, they are over a hundred feet tall, yet it is like driving along the freeway: I see the road surface but I pay minimal attention to it, and make no note of it.
One of my character defects is that when I see something enough times, like the clutter stacked on my love-seat, it becomes invisible.
I did not see the trees … until they called to me.
The “yes, yes, yes,” sound of thousands of their leaves whooshing in the breeze beckoned me. It was then that I turned and really looked at them. I heard the softest, shooshy whisper, “We knew you as a little girl.”
By golly, they did.
Oh, the street has changed – the section that was twenty plus feet below street level for those three blocks along 1st Street had been filled in sometime in the last thirty years. The three houses that were there forty years ago were now gone, replaced by an electric company, the City Public Works, a towing company, and a couple other large truck and construction businesses.
Yet the trees were still there along the edge of the river, as tall and strong as ever. Lush with late summer golden and orange leaves, rustling susurrous voices, gently soughing their song to me.
To the little girl I was, and had mostly forgotten. Trees along River Trail. photo by Mary Dessein
Hearing the trees, I remembered how I sang to them when I was out in the backyard batting my tetherball around the pole my dad put up for me when I was in elementary school. I remembered sitting in their shade for the picnics on the blanket with my sister and our dolls. I remembered the great dollops of snow falling from their boughs when the sun warmed their branches after a storm.
Photo by Mary Dessein My jade plant is blooming. My jade tree rather, as it is bigger than either of my children were when they started second grade. I’ve had the plant for close to thirty years. Seventeen years ago, it was in a three inch diameter ceramic planter, a swan to be exact. Now it is busting out of a foot tall, eighteen inch diameter pot.
I believe it is root bound. When other plants I have started blooming after years of not, I was told it was because they were now root bound. Really? In looking at articles on root bound plants, it is reportedly a negative thing for the plant and ought to be rectified.
Yet, my jade tree is blooming elegant little white flowers at least once a year, starting about five years ago.
My sansevieria (snake’s tongue or snake plant), which I got off a clearance table at the drug store in a tiny square starter pot sixteen years ago and is now hundreds of times larger, filling a foot tall, twelve inch diameter pot, currently blooms a couple times a year that I know of. Some times the stalk of blossoms is inside the forest of leaves and I don’t see it until much later. Both of my asparagus ferns, sprengeri and densiflorus, which are not ferns nor asparaguses, bloom with wee white flowers and tiny berries. After decades of no blooming.
My hoya. Oh my gosh, the hoya carnosa blooms three or four times a year. Lovely dangling clusters of blossoms whose lush fragrance fills my home.
This root bound concept and it’s physicality. Root bound could mean I don’t venture out or try new things, don’t go new places, or experiment with new ideas. It also could be where I am now: having been many places and done quite a bit over the last twenty-five years, and then having lived a quiet, low activity life in 2017, my root bound-ness was solidifying to allow me to bloom.
I had several gigs in the last three months, challenging me to expand my repertoire, and spend time with my performance pieces of music and storytelling.
And myself.
The quiet time, seeming inertia compared to my previous level of daily and weekly activity, was a puzzlement to me. Then my jade tree blossoms sprung out and began to open, reminding me how I felt enervated by the gigs, by interacting with the people involved, and the preparation time.
That quiet time was as if I had become root bound: I nested, wrote daily in my Artist’s Way journal, stayed up late and slept late, dialed back on my real estate activity and ventures, read novels, and even took an occasional nap. I did all the life stuff of paying bills, doing my podcast, going to various meetings and all, yet I was quiet.
That quiet time was me becoming more stable in this chapter of my life. More confident in who I am. More sure of my talents. Forming healthy detachments. Resolving ambiguities about what I want now, what gives my life quality, and what nurtures me.
What nurtures me and forming healthy detachments are two things that have eluded me during my life prior to now – I learned as a child not to do those two things. The belief presented was “always take care of others, it is selfish to care of yourself.”
Yet when two friends, I thought to be close friends, walked away from me without a word, healthy detachment lessons appeared. I felt the loss of the friendship yet have been able to move away from having to fix the problem; the problem which I was unaware of and is not mine. And to be able to see these people on occasion and be present in that moment with them, carrying no negative baggage forward.
My two children are now young adults with life partners they have chosen; one lives thousands of miles away from me. Healthy detachment. I am still deeply connected to them, yet have no responsibility to fix their problems and challenges. I listen, and offer advice when asked.
Nurturing myself. My, oh my. Maybe it is not selfish to prioritize what I need and want, perhaps it is even the best choice I can make. Yes, there are endless needs of millions of people in the world as well as there are starving children in China (which is what I was told as a child every time I did not eat every single morsel on my dinner plate. Both my parents having been raised in the Great Depression, I get where their reasoning was coming from; I am also pretty sure that statement has unintentionally caused many an eating disorder by overriding kids’ natural self-regulation and limits.) However, my job at this time is to take care of me. I donate each month to multiple causes, as well as volunteer. Laugh-out-loud! I am still justifying nurturing myself and not being selfish!
Four years ago on a landmark birthday of mine, my drunkard’s bottle cactus (hatiora) exploded in small yellow blossoms; the plant looked like it was covered in a beaded hairnet. It had not bloomed in the previous twenty-plus years since my sister gave me a tiny fingerling of a start off her plant. It is now a thousand times larger. And in a pot it is nearly growing up and out of, the pot is about a quarter the size of the cactus. Its hundreds of tiny branches hang elegantly several inches. Nowadays, my drunkard’s bottle cactus blooms each year around my birthday.
