#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
First Lady Slipper
Rain, rain, rain. Chippy and I go out in the rain. Up early to work on a poem. We go to the river, the geese and all of the goslings gliding across the surface of rain drops. I am preoccupied with a charged conversation with Frank. Something we are not agreeing about. He has gone to his meeting. I am by the river. Breathing. Letting myself be in calm. Calm like the raindrops. This is not an issue that needs an immediate solution even though I want one. What I really want is simply to be in agreement. So, I have to ask myself, what do I need to do to move toward agreement? This isn’t an easy clarity. But breathing in all the green wet calm is so helpful. Chippie gets lost in the grass at the river’s edge. But he knows where I am. I have treats. I am settled in calm and peace on this lovely walk. Later in the day it starts to dry out. Even the sun shows up. I have poetry workshop, and then I meet with a poetry friend on poems. My daughter comes. Today is the day we will take our long-awaited walk to see the lady slippers of May.And we coax Wave and his mother out with us into the wet woods, and Chippie too, on his leash, and he behaves. And Wave doesn’t have a picture in his mind yet, of what a lady slipper is, but he wants to win the who will see one first contest, and of course we all want him to win. He is on his mother’s back, and then when she’s tired, he’s on mine. We tell stories, I point to all the living things I know how to name. Sadly, the beeches are covered in leaves, they all grew green leaves that then grow black. Mostly it’s a cheerful walk and Chippie only nips my daughter’s butt once. First we find the lady slipper hips in the leaves under the trees, no stems. And then, the first, the pink beauty my daughter spots and then I go into the brush and make sure he spots it first. I want him to get down and touch one himself. I turn over the blossom and he says, it looks like a slipper. We see a few more and head back. Once home, Frank greets us. Look what I found, he says and shows us a first baby turtle, a painted turtle fresh from the egg he found in the yard. Wave wants to keep it. But no, he agrees to put the turtle in our frog pond. A day of wonderful firsts. And also loss. Frank and I take a drive to get dinner for everyone. A long drive. I know we will talk. And we do. Calmly. And we are very soon at an agreement that works for us both. As we drive along the driveway I finally have a chance to warn him not to mow over my newest cluster of milkweed along the driveway. But, alas. I’m too late. He has mowed the driveway earlier in the day. I will have to wait until next year when the cluster grows back, as I’m sure it will. We have a nice family dinner. Will joins us, home from a trip, my son joins us, and Wave insists that Franci and I act out the story she told Wave on our walk about how she and Will met. And so we do. This story has a very happy next chapter coming soon on June 27.
