Photosynthesis

Autumn photo shoot at Cathedral Park under the St. John's Bridge for Son's senior pictures.  It is an ethereal setting with soaring Gothic arches.

Brilliant sun rays pierce the angelic white clouds in today's periwinkle sky.

The gritty concrete girders and bisecting railroad tracks are an earthy crossroads to disappearing infinity.  The place is full of mystery and atmosphere and the stain of color and light.

Jackpot

Ninety percent of the time the weather on the Oregon coast is miserable.  Living in the Pacific Northwest means accepting that the beach is not a destination.  It's not pleasant to be assaulted by wind, rain, clinging sand and cold... in June. 

Add in vacationing Oregonians showing too much pasty white skin, and .... Santa Monica it's not. 

No.  Seaside, Oregon, with its mishmash of shabby low-rent vacation cottages and home-spun eclectic businesses, its crowded grid of seafood joints and brewpubs, is Southern California without the sunshine, youth and beauty.

But every once in a millennium the sun shines brilliant and there is no peer to the sparkling pristine carved-cliff beauty of the Oregon Coast.  Saturday was such a day.

Luna

Son had one request for Christmas:  a German Shepherd Puppy.  He has not asked for much the previous sixteen years.  But a puppy?  A living, chewing, pooping thing?  A German Shepherd? 

I tried talking him out of it;  or at least revising it down to something more manageable.  Oregon in the winter is terrible for housebreaking a puppy.  How about waiting until spring?  GSDs shed.  Let's look up low-shedders ....  What about a Corgi?  We aren't the type of family to be out climbing mountains or embarking on daring wilderness rescue missions.  What would a German Shepherd want with us? 

It's a good thing he didn't ask for a pony.  Because Christmas came and we delivered. GSD it is.

We had visited her at six weeks old in her cozy whelping box at a farm in Turner, Oregon.  She snuggled with her seven litter mates and toddled around when mama dog neared the pen.  She was reserved;  more likely to sit back and watch her more intrepid siblings get into trouble.  Fat, round, and bright eyed, she stole our hearts.  About three weeks later we picked up the small black fuzz ball and brought her home.

We named her Luna.  But she looks like a black bear cub.  Luna Bear.

She's Son's dog, but like everything else at Casa Peace Love and Bossy, she belongs to all of us.  It takes three nimble adults to guide a puppy into civilized human house living.  We have changed our sleeping arrangements, schedules, shopping lists, leisure activities, waking and sleeping hours, and research.  Everything revolves around the new baby.  In the month she's been with us, we have all grown and learned.  A lot.

Luna has served as a darling, demanding, determined antidote to my sedentary lifestyle of yore.  Right from the start, I have had to get down on the floor on her level.  To bend, reach, lift, walk, run and clean, clean, clean.  My sit time has been reduced drastically.  When I do sit, it is to read a few more pages of the dog training books.  This feature of puppy ownership may be the most valuable gift, adding years to my life and health to my years.  She's a good girl!

This morning I took Luna out onto the back deck, slick with frost.  As we stepped outside, I heard the flutter of wings overhead.  I followed the trail of sound and saw a small owl alight on the bone-colored tangle of winter branches.  His fat silhouette in the thicket stood out against the pearly  morning sky.  It was the first time I have ever seen him. 

I have heard him for years.  His gentle hoot has serenaded many a summer evening.  He perched in his high aerie and surveyed the winter domain.  Then he took flight and disappeared in the northern sky. 

I caught sight of the owl whose watchful eye and soft chant have woven through so many twilights.  A gift of the dawn.

Twenty

It's been two decades since we promised to love one another for all of life.  We tumbled into love quickly, deeply, purely. 

And he said, "There is a song in Mexico that says,  'Drink hot chocolate, pay what you owe." 

I knew at once that I could be with him forever and feel at peace.  I knew he would take care of me.  Under the stars of the night sky on a beach in a fishing village on the Gulf coast of Vera Cruz, I felt it on day three.  I felt it. 

Today I love him as much as I did on December 30, 1993 when we exchanged vows of love and faithfulness. 

Life does not hand out easy.  And we have never had it so.  As they say, "The dream is free.  Hustle sold separately."  We have worked.  The path has had its share of sorrows.  But he has been my rock, my knight, my co-conspirator, my defender, my love, my ardent fan. 

There is beauty along the way.  Beauty every day.  We drink hot chocolate, and pay what we owe. 

Overly Compelling Diagnoses

A few weeks ago I attended my nephew's special education conference.  The team gathered there helped me see with new eyes that some of his quirky behavior is a manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder.  His need to walk a certain route in the halls, making him late to class daily.  His carrying his backpack to breakfast, and fastidiously returning it upstairs afterwards each day.  His  refusal to stay out of the street on a walk .... maybe the sidewalk was something he could not allow himself to touch.  Hmmmm.... knowing him as I do, the explanation of this thinking pattern made sense and answered a lot of questions that have had us stumped.

OCD.  Aren't we all a little OCD?

Take the kitchen at our house.  Each of the three of us has one stubborn OCD pitfall.  It gets us every time.  

Son will inspect every spoon for water spots before using one to eat.  If it has a spot, it's rejected.  Back into the drawer.  Sometimes he has to go through six or eight to find the one with flawless shine.  Hubby and I roll our eyes.  Son now has to set the table each day, because if he does not pick the spoons, the whole meal is delayed.

I don't care about water spots on my pretty spoons.  But I have my own offbeat tangent.  The IKEA tumblers come in the colors of the rainbow.  And they must be stacked in the order of those rainbow hues.  Indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink.  No one else seems to understand that this is necessary, so I constantly happen upon the stack done wrong.  And I must fix it.  People!  How can you live with yourselves, letting this slide?

Hubby smiles at spoon inspections, and may not even see the rainbow.  But he has his stumbling block too.  The utensil drawer has only one compartment for forks, and we have two kinds of forks:  salad and dinner.  Hubby maintains them in neat and separate stacks in that compartment,  straight as soldiers.  If Son or I empty the dishwasher, the forks are in wild disarray,  jumbled together catawampus.  Hubby patiently cleans them up.  It's as necessary as making the bed in the morning.

Yep.  I can understand that special walking route, and the backpack routine.  How could I not?

Well, it's time to go tighten the lightbulb and check the door latch.  52 times.  One for every year.

Paper

An elegy

Touch its gentle heft.  Breathe

Its smell of words.  Hear

Its powdery lament.

Stardust, house dust

Glitter, must

Do even diamonds

Turn to rust?

I like the weight

The pull of gravity

The charm

Of real books

In hand, in lap

In crook of arm.

The neon scream

Of ebook readers

Tablets, pads

Flags the spirit

Tires the heart

A wearing, tedious fad.

Some day on the eternal shore

The book of life

Will open

And no more

The flash of manmade light

And speeding streams of bits

To bear.

O hurry time

To find a resting there.

Autumn

A glorious summer with its long run of sun has given way to fall.  The temperatures have dropped.  I love the change. 

A new season comes along just in time.  Right when we had begun to yawn and glance at the clock. 

Frosty breath in the morning.  The familiar feel of my coat.  Darker days.  Longer nights. 

And the leaves scurrying out in every direction under the headlights' beam on slick streets.  They scatter like a flock of songbirds, startled into flight. 

Or a coven of tiny witches, racing into the shadows, cackling as they go.