Author Archives: sara

About sara

i live in michigan with my teenage daughter, my partner, and our three cats. i am a paralegal, legal manager and corporate governance specialist, and when i'm not reading contracts or maintaining the dusty archives of our arcane corporate history like some weirdly specific librarian, i enjoy knitting, books, running slowly, making candles, and bird-watching. i started blogging way back when I was an expat living in australia and in recent years have tried to be more diligent about keeping this space up to date and as a creative outlet for the things in my life that inspire me and balance my 9-5.

till the summer comes again

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Mid-Michigan received a wallop of ice before Christmas that rendered most of my hometown without power for the holiday. I am not sure how everyone managed to stay warm and make the holiday bright for their families. I always imagine myself living in past times but I know how completely unable I am to deal with any loss of my mod cons, so perhaps the London Blitz and I wouldn’t have been the best fit.

I drove up there on Christmas Eve day. I don’t get back there very often; our family has mainly decamped and scattered. The soundtrack once you get through Perry, up on M-52, is mostly country western or Christian stations or, as I found, classic rock, and so, to a soundtrack that was right out of my formative years, I wended my way north of the fields. I found it quiet and still and frozen, no sound except the creaking of ice in the wind-stirred trees, and legions of power trucks from all over the Midwest coming to the rescue. The sun was blinding and I wanted to stop every five minutes to photograph the cornfields and the hedgerows and the barns, the beautiful old barns and tumbled stone walls, all coated in silver.

It was undeniably beautiful to look at.

Downstate, we thankfully missed the ice, but got enough snow on Christmas and Boxing Day to make it a beautiful winter wonderland.

days merry and bright

“More evident from high latitudes, a hemisphere’s winter solstice occurs on the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the sun’s daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest.The winter solstice itself lasts only a moment in time, so other terms are used for the day on which it occurs, such as “midwinter”, or “the shortest day”. For the same reason, it should not be confused with “the first day of winter” or “the start of winter” (Lidong in the East Asian calendars). The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days…

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but many cultures have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.”

I’ve been on the struggle bus this holiday season, and as the days have gone on I’ve seen a few of my friends filing on board with me. It’s not a conscious sadness; it’s more the pervasive pressure of Happiness All Around that makes me feel like it’s more under scrutiny and thus more expected. Lights! Trees! Presents! Food! Music! Are you happy yet??! Well for God’s sake WHY NOT?

I think I’d prefer to just observe the solstice this year, the knowledge that the world always tilts back eventually, the simple appreciation of the balance between light and dark.

One of my colleagues sent my (very small) department to a spa afternoon earlier this week and it’s a luxurious joy to have a pretty manicure, and glowing skin from a facial & massage. Unfortunately, the spa was in the basement of a grand Detroit casino and hotel, and my tolerance for casinos has completely faded since the days where I got married in one. Just walking through the land of smoke and slot machines, a world where time never seems to go anywhere, made me feel uneasy and oppressed by the weight of thousands of unmet expectations.

I saw this quote on Facebook the other day, and loved it.

I think it’s my new mantra for 2014.

Otherwise, I am just looking for small moments of peace in the days, and trying to soak up the people and the things that fill my bucket, as my baby girl would say. It turns out there are lots of them. Not just in my own life, but in the blogs I read and the feeds I love on Instagram.

It’s raining today, and there are winter weather warnings all over the state. I wouldn’t get near a big box store or the mall to save my life today. So it may just be a walk downtown to investigate the little knitting shop to see if I can buy local.

thanksgiving

after grey cat died in my arms on the antiseptic table at a vet’s office, i cried with my head against a wall and felt more alone than i ever had in my entire life, the breath of my good loyal friend gone from the world, no longer her big gold eyes watching over me, padding quietly after me wherever i went, blessing me with her watchful and completely selfless love for sixteen years. i knew i would get another cat, but i didn’t think it would be so soon. however, fate, as it will, intervened, and the addition of the kittens to the house has been so welcome. they are, to put it bluntly, crazy; i’d forgotten the mischief that two kittens can cause. falling into bathtubs, playing endlessly with jingling furry feathery toys, scaling bookshelves, chasing each other’s tails, walking across computer keyboards, dragging little girl pajamas into litter boxes…collapsing into exhausted naps like the babies they are, purring and purring and purring.

last night i dreamed of being lost trying to find my way somewhere, but not alarmingly so; just more confused than i had thought i should be to get where i was going, lost on backstreets and taking trams via a circuitous route, seeing things i hadn’t expected to see, but never entirely fearful that i wouldn’t get where i was going. then i was on a beach in australia looking in cottage windows at a happy family and feeling happy for them; then i was with people who are very important to me, trying to quickly enjoy their presence and trying not do anything to scare them off, or that would make the moments end. i woke up this morning and came downstairs to snow falling, and when i turned on the radio, rhapsody in blue was on wrcj. i tend to celebrate with food, so i made hazelnut coffee and cranberry orange scones and thought about fairy tales and read some blogs. it’s thanksgiving.

i never used to think much more about thanksgiving except that it was a great holiday for eating. it is, of course, that, but somehow this year it is different for me. somewhere this year i learned about gratitude; there’s something about losing many things in your life that you thought were unloseable that can make you extremely appreciative for the other things in your life that still manage to be awesome. yesterday, in my work cafeteria, a girl i barely know called over the salad bar to me that i should enjoy my holiday, how excited she was for hers, she and her family had already started the food preparations, and the holiday is all about family. it kind of hit me, over the salad bar, how surrounded i was at that moment by so many people who are full of love and happiness and togetherness and joy, and i’m somehow a strange part of that too, and can find it in the most unexpected places. it’s always there, even when it seems to have entirely faded from view. old things leave and new things appear and in the midst of that turmoil and constant change there is always something to feel grateful for, and now at the age of forty i understand what thanksgiving is really about.

all the best to you and yours.

august end

to read

terri windling writes a beautiful blog with beautiful pictures, and her ‘into the woods’ has been fascinating – a very thought-provoking, extensively researched series on mythical archetypes, fairy tales and literature.

highly recommend.

of chickadees and roses, briefly

last year, we had wrens, and they met a tragic end in the clutch of a local cooper’s hawk; this year, we have chickadees living in the rosebush in the back. the rosebush is one we discovered under an overgrown garden plot choked with myrtle; i haphazardly threaded it around a cheap home depot trellis and it has absolutely flourished. the birdhouse is decorative, a description which apparently has no meaning to its current tenants. every day we see the pair of them flying back and forth, bringing food to the nest, taking turns, perching on the overhead wires and the tomato cages. no sign of the babies yet, but i am checking as often as is seemly.

can you spot the chickadee in this picture?

they don’t mind snoop playing on her swingset, but they despise me hanging around their box with my camera trying to get a snap.

and yes, i know these pictures would be much more lovely if that rosebush happened to be in bloom currently, but it’s not, not yet; although it is full of the promise of a riot of violent pink blossoms. any day now.

so here is an obligatory shot of the first bloom on the much more boring yet always reliable ‘knockout’ rosebush in our front yard. i took it hastily one morning in the rain, pulling out of the garage to take snoop to school and get myself to work; but we stopped to take a picture of this first blossom.

now that the engine has started, it will finally cease its relentless blooming sometime around thanksgiving.

spring garden

yup, the lilacs came after all.

there’s a lot of other exciting stuff going on in our backyard as well.

every year, gb does the vegetable gardens and my only complaint is that he wants to make the most of every inch of space. traditionally, by august, our gardens are riotous and chaotic and we’ve succumbed our patio in a war of green attrition. key learning: squash vines have no place in a square foot box bed.

i am more minimalist.

this year, i went to flower day at eastern market in detroit and purchased 3 varieties of heirloom tomatoes – cherokee purple, mr stripey, and hillbilly. i bought 4 pickling cucumber plants, and saved my splurge for basil – 3 kinds, traditional, lemon, and dark purple. the joy of our summer garden is making caprese salads out of our tomato & basil, fresh and vivid, with beautiful buffalo mozz dripping with oil. mmmmm.

that’s it. although gb is immensely dissatisfied with the open space in the gardens, i think we will both be pleased with a more orderly and limited garden this year. i do subscribe to the belief that you shouldn’t try to do too much, but what you do, you should do well.

another exciting item of note is that our neighbor has a beautiful japanese maple tree, and last week i noticed a small crimson leaf struggling to emerge from inside one of our hostas. closer examination revealed that a tiny japanese maple sapling had taken root inside the hosta. gb & i did emergency surgery to extricate it (and divided the hosta while we were at it). we planted it in its own pot and we will see if we can nurse it along so that someday it is as big and glorious as its mama tree next door.

due to a late, cold spring, the peonies still haven’t emerged, but it looks to be a banner year for the rosebush, which is laden with buds.

on / off

michigan spring is on / off; one day it is snowing and the next day it is uncomfortably warm. we haven’t been outside as much as we’d like because we are all sneezing in a cloud of pollination. still, though, there have been a few good runs in the sunshine, red tulips in the yard, and a meditative afternoon spent trimming the hydrangeas, which felt oddly like an exercise in bonsai.

i look out my office window and notice the swallows have suddenly appeared, making their rapid graceful loops over the green lawn. the red-winged blackbirds sway on the reeds in the ditches by the side of the road. the sky is more blue.

lilacs can’t be far behind.

blue planet

over the weekend, we framed & hung several prints by Jay Ryan. we finally feel like grown-ups, with real artwork.

the undersea theme inspired snoop, who responded with her own quite lovely image.

i love everything about it, from the seahorse family to the jellyfish.

star chart

when i was a little girl, i went through a phase where i cried every day when i went to school, and pretended illnesses so i could go back home to my mom where i felt safe. i don’t remember what felt so sad and scary, other than just being out in the world alone, i suppose. every day when i went out the door, i felt that something terrible could happen and i may never come back, i could be lost out there with no way to get home, spinning alone in a dark universe with nothing to hold me safe.

so my mom made me a star chart, and every day i went to school without crying, every day where i managed my fears, i got a little foil star to lick and stick on my chart, and at the end of the week, if there was a nice row of shiny stars, we would walk downtown in a blue friday night dusk and i could pick something out at the dime store, or there would be a special treat for me and my brother. it was never about the plastic baby doll, or the little golden book, or the actual thing that i picked. it was the promise that at the end of that row of stars, i knew i would be home, and i would be with people who would always love me, and i would be safe, and i would have made it through another week of growing up.

it seems funny and unfair that at almost forty years old, i remember that star chart, and think only half-joking that i could still really use one.

maybe everyone feels like this sometimes.

all week, i thought about stars, and when i was pretty sure that i had earned it, i took myself to teavana and treated myself to some tea. i think sometimes it is just your own self who has to keep those little lights shining in the big dark universe, and most of the time, even when i think i can’t, i can close my eyes and see them and feel them. i just have to try.

and a lovely hot drink and a pretty tea tin certainly help.

Six Ten

of this be sure: you do not find a happy life, you make it.