The Trash Heap and the Nest

Weary, I wheel a barrowful of weeds toward the trash heap.

“I’m discouraged,” I tell Marlo as I trudge past the six-foot fence that keeps deer from his vegetables.

“Why?” he asks, without looking up from patting in lettuce and carrot seeds.

“I’ve spent all morning on just one corner."

I apparently skipped that back corner during my April weeks of rake-and-burn.

So this morning I gathered up both old and new.

I lopped brown stalks of ornamental grass and hibiscus, cracked off black mum twigs, and raked limp leaves.

Then I dug dandelions as big as bowling balls.

While clicking to a new section of the Moby Dick recording was listening to, I saw that, instead of five more chapters left, I had thirty-five. Ishmael would not be done talking in time my Saturday plant sale after all.

Then, in the middle of Chapter 107, the recording lost its cyberspace signal and went dead.

A bird scolds overhead as I dump this fifth barrowful upon the heap. I sigh and decide to quit.

I wheel away from the heap. She swoops, raises her volume, and scolds again.

I look skyward, and spot her nest.

Not any ordinary nest.

An oriole nest.

Orioles don’t pile their gatherings of twigs and grass and straw helter-skelter above the joining of two twigs. They weave a nest that hangs below, then perch upon the twigs to feed their young.

I’ve been luring orioles to my deck with halves of oranges and leftover jam for several years now, but never seen their nest.

I last saw an oriole nest when I was ten. I sat in silence under the backyard clothes line and watched as they transported nesting stuff and wove. I was still and knew. . .

At ten, I had no words for the spacious stillness that nest opened in me.

I have no words now.

I have tried borrowing words from others—the ineffable, the numinous, sehnsucht. . .

But naming it remains always just beyond my grasp.

I look from the nest to the trash heap—the same stuff, both of them.

I know not the why or how, but I wheel the barrow beneath the deck, trailing clouds of glory.

I have seen the nest of an oriole.

And that has made all the difference.

Sacred Rhythm

I woke this morning with a nature deficit disorder. After four days deprived, I was restless for my gardens.

Thursday through Saturday, at Pella’s downtown Molengracht, I sat in a white vendor tent under a slice of sky with bricks beside and below. Our tent perched among others along the sides of an artificial canal with bright blue cement beside and below its water.

A sign warned not wade in the water. It was chemically treated.

For three days, I greeted passing tourists with a winsome smile, hoping to increase the percentage of them who would browse—and then purchase—handmade ceramics and jewelry.  I believed in our nonprofit project to support Nicaraguan artisans, but by Saturday night, my smile was weary and hollow.

Sunday, I slept.

Once awake, this morning, I start the first chapter of Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Solitude and Silence—and I feel deeply her invitation.

Next, a giant azure bowl of sky and the green garden call me. Over the weekend the perennial geraniums have blossomed in lavender, fuschsia, and pink. On the poppies red flowers are opening.

The soil is too soggy for footfalls, so I dig as many bald dandelions and tall grasses as I can reach from the curb. Then, a cool breeze on my face and arms, I hoe the infant weeds I can reach from the lawn side of the beds.

This Monday morning, I am also hungry for words. So Moby Dick keeps me company. The Pequot crew captures a right whale, then competes with a German ship Jungfrau for a more valuable sperm whale. The Pequot triumphs; then the whale sinks before the crew can harvest its oil.

Adroitly weaving narration and fact, its narrator Ishmael also teaches me about a whale’s eyes astride its giant head, about its tiny ears and brain, and its nonexistent nose.

Lawnside weeding complete, I notice the ragged garden borders. Marlo coaxes the gas-powered weed eater to life for me. I stop Ishmael, and with a roaring motor and whirling string, I crisp the garden edges.

Then I whir down the weeds around the compost pile.

By noon my nature deficit disorder has stilled.  And my word-hunger has been fed.

After lunch I head for town to craft words of my own.

With scone, coffee, and computer on the glass table in front of me, I reflect.

This morning, my eyes and ears were filled by a double dose of beauty.

But with weed eater and  Moby Dick in my ears, my garden was not silent. And with Ishmael for company, I was not alone.

Breathing deeply, I hold guilt at bay.

For everything a season, I think.

However, when Ishmael concludes his epilogue three days from now, in silence and solitude, perhaps I shall go to the garden alone.

Vanished

“Have you read this?” I asked my husband, holding the latest Pella Chronicle aloft with shock and pointing to the headline.

He nodded. Yes, he heard about it when I was in Michigan.

In three area restaurants—in Newton, Oskaloosa, and Pella—eighteen people had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for violation of immigration law. Five occurred at the Tulip Garden—Pella’s first-ever immigration violation arrests.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked. This was a small-potatoes arrest. Since January 2008, 400,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported. On April 2 of this year, immigration officials announced the nation-wide arrest of 3,168 immigrants in a six-day operation—31 of them from Iowa.  In 2008, Postville, Iowa, experienced 400 arrests of immigrant workers—at that time the largest single raid of a workplace in United States history.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked. In 2010 Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that Iowa’s undocumented immigrant population totaled 65,000. I knew local restaurants had Latino staff members. And I had thought that some of them might be undocumented.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked. I shouldn’t expect my Iowa town to be different from the other towns across the state.

But I was.

Because I had met Jorge.

In early April, Jorge’s brown face had contrasted with his white shirt as he quietly refilled my coffee cup at a Tulip Garden table. “Habla Englais?” I asked him as he poured.

“Leetle bit,” he answered, shyly.

I asked this lean, aproned man in my rudimentary Spanish if he would like to learn more English. I wanted to teach English to adults who only knew a little, I said. He glanced nervously toward the cash register and kitchen. “Ahora estoy trabajando  (I’m working now,),” he said.

I gave him my business card and asked him to write his name and telephone number on a paper. He painstakingly shaped the letters and numbers. I said I’d call him with the help of Karem, my friend from El Salvador, who spoke better Spanish.

Karem and I called, and set a meeting time for the next day. Then I daydreamed. We could hold class at a neutral space—perhaps a library conference room.  He might know one or two co-workers who would also like to learn English. I could now use the ESL books I had used for only one teaching session before those fledgling students had decided that Florida was a more hospitable environment and headed south.

But the next day, Jorge failed to show. We dialed. He did not answer—not that call or the half dozen after that. “He may be afraid,” Karem said.

Afraid with good reason, I now thought. I imagined the scene, ICE officials entering—“calm, stern, and professional” the newspaper said. I pictured them blocking all entrances, asking restaurant staff members for their identification, and then escorting five frightened people from the building.

 Was Jorge one of them? Where was he taken? What would happen to him?

Wanting to know, I stopped at Tulip Garden and queried its owner. Yes, Jorge was among the five. He thought they were in Des Moines, but wasn’t sure.

I scoured the Internet, but information was scanty. One report said no one was charged criminally. Strange. The recent federal focus has been on undocumented workers guilty of crimes. About 90 percent of the 3,168 arrested on April 2 had criminal records.

Still unsatisfied, I read the online comments after the brief articles and was shocked again.  One responder thought they should self-deport themselves and “take their anchor babies with them.” A second one thought they should be treated as he would expect of  Mexico—“lock them up and throw away the key.” Another suggested in exchange we send 20 million U.S.  drug addicts and gang bangers to Mexico.

Tonight, as I continue to wonder about what I have read and heard, I’m not thinking of millions of people, but of one.

I’m wondering, and I have no answers. Yet.

I’m thinking of Jorge, who has a face and name.

And that makes all the difference.

Double Vision

I garden this morning along a Pella country road. I prune branches from the Cotoneaster, then pot one of its twigs that has sprouted roots where it touched soil. I uproot pigweed, dandelions, and miscellaneous grasses, sometimes wedging the digger beneath them to push roots from below as I pull stems above. Sometimes I simply pull the stems and hope.

During the same three hours, I seek cheap Nantucket lodging. The inn full, I consent to bed down with a cannibal named QueeQueg. Soon friends, we become whalers aboard Pequot, commanded by Captain Ahab. Call me Ishmael.

At age sixty-four, it is my first time as Ishmael. Though I majored in English and took American literature, I have never made it more than a few pages into Moby Dick before abandoning ship.

And now, thanks to Marilynne Robinson and a travel confession, I am listening to an online recording of Herman Melville’s classic.

Robinson, a John Calvin scholar and fan, said last week at the Festival of Faith and Writing, that she had started reading him to understand the theological background of Moby Dick. She advised us, “Read John Calvin. Read him twice.”

As we departed Michigan, we listened to a recording of Robinson’s 1980 novel, Houskeeping. During a break, I confessed to my car mate Hannah, the shameful Melville gap in my literary repertoire.

“I’ve tried, but I’ve never gotten beyond page three.”

Shamefaced, she—whose English major has far fewer miles than mine--confessed the same failing.

I added that, worse still, it had been assigned reading in American literature class, and I must have resorted to Cliff’s Notes. Then we returned to Housekeeping.

Although Robinson’s prose is more modern than Melville’s nineteenth century style, her books are nevertheless, for me a dense, rich fare.  On the long drive home, a slow-paced listen to a professional reader proved a good match.

I wondered as we crossed the Iowa border if long, slow listen might work for Melville, too.

I googled “Moby Dick audio,” stumbled across the Librivox Web site, and for two consecutive mornings I have inhabited two worlds—surprised by delight.

I stereotyped this novel as dark and dismal. Darkness may yet come, but in the opening chapters Ishmael, speaking aloud among the flowers, is a wry and witty Presbyterian. So the 1851 Nantucket seaside cohabits with my Iowa beds.

Last night I emailed the good news to Hannah. She, thinking of her fulltime employment and my retired status, asked, “And how many hours will the recording last?”

These days I live by a kairos, not chronos time. I told her, “I don’t know. I'm just taking it chapter by chapter.”

She lamented, “Your progress makes me feel even worse.”

I consoled. “You have another four decades plus a year of retirement before I will allow you any guilt.”

As chapter 20 ends today, and I throw a third bin of weeds atop the refuse pile, I remember Hannah’s question, uncase my smartphone, and look ahead.

Still 115 chapters left.

I do the math.  I have 11.5 three-hour mornings in the garden to inhabit two worlds. I’ll finish just in time for the annual perennial garage sale that supports my gardening habit.

And after that?

Robinson’s words re-echo: “Read John Calvin. Read him twice.”

I tell her I’m sure there is no audio recording of The Institutes.

And, if there is, even in this second childhood in which I’m wondering what I shall become as I grow old, I’m sure Calvin’s dense prose—which offers no imaginary whaling trip and no Nantucket—is beyond my reach.

This gap shall remain.

And I fear that all the way to the next world’s border, daughter of Eve that I am, I shall seek strange comfort in the ancient security blanket of guilt.

The Digger and the Key

As I scooch my rear end sideways to dig more dandelions near the Japanese barberry, sharp metal pokes my rear pocket. I reverse quickly, lift the sedum leaves, and see the rusted prongs of last summer’s dandelion digger.

When my digger vanished, I retraced my steps once, then after five minutes shrugged. “Oh, well. . .”

I bought a longer-handled digger, and got better leverage against tenacious roots.

Until this moment, I had forgotten last year’s loss.

Not so my car key.

As I uproot a piece of crabgrass, I lament the car key again.

When it vanished this winter, I wandered the house like a lost puppy, sniffing under the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of life. I wedged my paws into upholstered cracks in house and car.

I hunted and whimpered without success. Then I repeated the process.

Multiple times.

For days.

A new electronic key costs more than a garden tool. But, in fact, the key loss cost me nothing. Honda had graciously provided three with the purchase, two of them electronic.

I am not keyless, but I still mourn. Whenever I open a cluttered drawer or vacuum the car carpet, I still watch and wait and wish.

I also lost the fused-glass key ring, yes. But I could easily replace it a fraction of what my new digger cost.

I don’t want to, though. The key fits more easily into my purse without a ring.

I give myself a shake and return to the moment.

The sun is bright. The breeze is cool. Life is good.

And, then, it is time to leave.

Re-entering the house, I put the clippers on the garage shelf remembering my calm when they disappeared a day this spring. I remember, too, a more frantic search—for a phone bill.

I realize, somehow, I breathe more deeply out of doors than in: my daily trip to the garden is a sacred rhythm.

As I step through the doorway, I long for the summer day I will be whole—and indoors or out—able to carry sun and breeze and garden in my heart

Too Much Fun

For three days, surrounded by 2000 other word-lovers, I drank words.

By day two, in fact, I was dizzy with them.

I informed Facebook friends, that Calvin’s Festival of Faith and Writing was almost too much fun.

Yesterday, on the trip home, I eased my withdrawal by listening to Marilyn Robinson’s novel, Housekeeping, downloaded to my smartphone for me by my Michigan sister.

Kathy gave me Michigan perennials, too. They trailed me quietly to Iowa, crammed in my tiny trunk along with my hair-dryer, make-up, and business-casual costumes.

The book had more miles than the highways.

So, this morning, after slipping into faded pants and sweatshirt, I strapped on my phone.

Outdoors now in cracked rubber boots, I listen to the Marilynne and to my gardens.

I hear her luminous final chapters along my flower beds’ suggestions for Iowa homes for the Asiatic lily, the Angel Wing hosta, and the anonymous ground cover.

I have expected after the planting to uproot bald dandelions from the backyard beds, but the baby Quackgrass near driveway calls,

then the infant Creeping Jenny under mailbox,

and finally greying dandelions surrounding the front-yard lilac.

As I groom the gardens, alone with an April sun and a novel,

both burn brighter than three days of neon rooms amid the crowds.

This morning is even more fun,

But not too much fun.

The conference and the crowds were margaritas.

But, the garden and the book,

the listening and the looking,

are the water of life.

Sudden Freeze

This year, Iowa spring came early.

Daffodils, then tulips, bloomed in March.

I potted tropicannas and morning glories.

The bulbs sprang giant leaves,

The seeds shot shoots.

Last night frost fell,

Invading even their plastic dome.

The morning glories are shriveled to nothing.

The canna leaves dangle.

 I trim limp leaves

And wonder if the stalks

Will sprout new.

I do not know.

In the garden I never know.

I plant, I prune, I watch

In a cloud of unknowing.

This morning as I snip,

That cloud is mysteriously

Laden with peace.

Unfrozen cannas from a previous year