Magnolia Tree, Mother Earth, Spring

Witness.

The magnolia tree across the street is in full bloom. Over thirty years ago this tree was so small new owners thought she was a bush. This spring she stands taller than the neighboring rooftops. For some reason — temperature? sun? soil? — her scent is epic this bloom cycle. The sweet air wafts through our backyards, almost sugary. Pedestrians walking by stop still to look for the source. I just have to open a window to be overwhelmed.

While spring proceeds to throw down beauty the news of the world gets more ugly. Countries are tearing themselves to shreds. I have friends going through hard stuff; beloveds lost, physical challenges, life decisions. How to be effective, helpful, supportive? Texting seems impersonal. Phone calls are exhausting. Letter writing is a rusty skill. Darkness is falling on so many people. If I could bottle the perfume of this magnolia I would not hesitate to mail it to you, coddled in tissue. Much better than deciphering my handwriting in a letter.

I have been thinking about faith today: faith in the trees waking up come April; faith that my riotous hyacinth will emerge all the wrong colors but still so right; faith that a day of sunlight can keep the worst at bay. Last summer we held our breath when the house across the street sold, the time of year when the magnolia is just a big leafy tree, a little too big for her corner of the property. In fairness to the newest owners, the magnolia shadows their yard and brushes against the house behind her. When the tree surgeons arrived a few weeks later and the machinery started there was every possibility that I might have leapt the hedge, put my arms around her trunk and held my body between her and the workmen. I watched through the shade (that kind of neighbor!) and held my breath, shoes on standby. Thankfully she just received a good prune, a limb taken here and there, some cables attached to hold the biggest branches stable. Their reward for having faith in her was the glorious bloom I am gazing at from my desk this morning.

We should name her, this magnificent sentry, this quiet force of mother nature that swings moods and intoxicates evenings. She stands so tall and reminds me that witnessing the earth’s journey is a privilege. And I am responsible whether a human, friend or stranger to take care of what has been and will be placed before me — the good, bad, well, unwell, new or old. Join me.

I send you my far-reaching love and support and appreciation. And her.

Barefoot, Breathe

Barefoot.

For my last week here at Wren Cottage I am letting the senses play. Winter’s grande finale in the Pacific Northwest has been to deliver us a stunning, early springtime. Birdsong is histrionic, the daffodil, narcissus, cherry and plum blossoms have exploded. Laundry hung on the line dries in two hours. I dusted off a straw hat today; everything about me and around me is breathing, from my fingers to my toes. There are flip-flops in play.

I recently submitted to ten publications, a tough piece, a braided essay of the two illnesses that make me who I am today; my mother’s and my own. This is the story, in short form, that I have been trying to write for a long time. Not a grief story (so many to read and listen to right now) but a story about actively dying, facing death and coping despite. The work energizes me when it reads right. It deflates me when it reads wrong. But ah, the view out the open window.

I break in the kitchen to bake Irish Soda Bread (I have not a lick of Irish in me, just love it) and a Guiness Chocolate Cake. Frittata tonight. Barefoot if possible from morning to night. Kicking off my boots and shoes in the last three days has been as good as a skinny dip in a clear mountain lake — cold, shocking, sensory.

On my morning walk today I came upon fountain mice borrowing tiny blue sparkle shoes probably misplaced by a small leprechaun after the St. Patrick’s Day activities. I smiled all the way home.

Can you kick off your shoes today, wherever you are, feel the earth under your scrunched toes, let a little air on your skin? It’s the little things that will get us through.

The Marketplace at Pleasant Beach, Bainbridge Island WA

Gather time, Obituary, Tiny Stories

Tiny Stories

On Sunday I woke to a pink sky. An eagle hung off the flowering cherry outside the window calling to something somewhere, competing with a tiny songbird who was celebrating the blossoms. Incongruous. Thrilling. Auspicious.

The day poured rain but there was slow-roast cabbage and herb-stuffed chicken in the oven for the Oscar marathon later. I ironed clothes and cleaned closets, the washing machine thumping. There were a scattering of touch-in phone calls, texts and emails. I put on my pajamas at 5pm. That, friends, is OK.

A day that might seem mundane was actually satisfying, filled with tiny stories that I could turn over late at night when the stars swam in the sky: stories of keeping order. Soap. Music. A basket of mending. A story of not working. A chance to let my mind wander. What do I want to accomplish this week? Maybe just that day. Maybe the rest of it will fall into place better because I took a day of reset. Maybe I will just be better prepared for the swoosh of to-do’s and must-do’s and have-to’s. Do you ever take that time to let the day gather in your hands?

I think of all those jokes about what is going to be written on our gravestones, obituaries we might write for ourselves. Mine will read,

”She loved butter and puppies and spring but nothing more than watching her children grow wings and become beautiful.” Maybe I will add the smell of lilac and laundry soap. Perhaps a line about breathing being the most essential involuntary precious gift.

What are your tiny stories?

They will be different day to day. That is the beauty of it all. Pay attention.

Faith, February 29, leap, Still Life

Leap!

Today we leap! February 29, 2024. True confessions, I was more of a slug today, wrapped in a blanket reading and listening to the wind throw down arctic temperatures. Urge to cocoon, not cavort. I could not turn on the news. Trying to figure out just where the heck 2024 is going. Overwhelmed by a need to have GOALS and PURPOSE and PRODUCTION and CLARITY immediately. Which is of course the curse of all of the above.

I am reading a book, Still Life by Sarah Winman, a novel with engaging characters including a parrot that roam between England and Florence, loving and losing and loving again, eating fresh pasta and drinking shots in a pub. Humor and wit and sadness and art. Adore every page. Have cried twice in the last chapter. Feel propelled to book a ticket on the railway.

February is traditionally rudderless — beware the urge to give yourself bangs. Yes, the sun is setting later but it still gets gloomy at 4pm. I am tired of comfort food. I am in need of a pedicure. I want to wear a swishy skirt and feel sun on my shins. No leaping here.

Perhaps the word I am looking for is traction; my toes firmly digging into this day. Appreciating what I have done instead what I am not doing: that I have a clean essay to send to twenty submission calls. That I have had an amazing time with my family this week. That the daffodils and cherry blossoms are blooming, though a bit soggy, when I return to Seattle next week for book readings, workshops and hikes.

Is this going to be a ‘leap of faith’ year? Not about bangs. Really. For me, I need to trust myself. That may be on the couch. That may be jumping into the unknown. Faith in self.

Pat yourself on the back. Today you have done an amazing job of being here, there, or wherever the day landed you.

This guy, just mere ounces of feathery bone, braved the arctic wind for a few crunchy seeds and posed for his cameo shot. It’s all in the toes, do you agree?

Chocolate, February 14, gratitude, Heart, Pink, Valentine

Everything Counts.

I love all things valentine. The chance before, during and after February 14 to beam out love. Is it necessarily a bad thing to proclaim a sentimental day in the middle of the bleak midwinter? Construction paper and a pair of scissors, a scrap of fabric and some embroidery thread, a batch of chocolate brownies, a group of gals for dinner, a phone call? I have seized the day to celebrate you, friends and family, ever since I could write my name. Today, pink hearts, boxes of chocolate, cards, even ecards fly through the air to remind people they mean something for many reasons. A one-hit chance to show a little more love.

This 2-2-24 I join you in feeling broken hearted from war, loss, illness and displacement; from our politics that wear me down and darken the days. The news is violent. The climate is suffering. I take today to reset my thanks, take a long walk and see the early daffodils near Wren Cottage, send some pink to friends and family who have made the last year better despite it all. I have spent the last week spelling out heart-shaped gratitude to my family, to those who have held my hand when things are difficult and to those acquaintances that have done more than they know. Especially to those of you who have become like family: everything counts, just being there. Everything you do.

Love you all.

#amwriting, #STOP, Healing, Health, Memoir

STOP!

On January 10 2024 I shot out of the gate full of fire and resolve, the fabulous holidays behind me, a mighty suitcase full of essentials headed down the baggage carousel. Workshops and writing groups were ahead in Seattle. Two hours: that was all it took for my suitcase to destroy my left arm, deltoid and neck while pushing the heavy bag up the Bainbridge Island ferry ramp. Unbelievably I was faced with a change of plan.

I spent a long time setting up this particular winter/spring; dates in the calendar written in pen, submissions, sign-ups, advance emails for groups meetings. The Orthopedic took a picture a day later, stated there were no tears and I needed rest, massage and muscle relaxants. I had planned to be in a two-day immersive that first week, join a gym, walk five miles a day. I could not get dressed, lift my arms to brush/wash/clip my hair or look at a screen. Full stop.

I don’t do “change of plan” well in any condition so I persevered/struggled; propped books and my iPad on a large pillow. Slept upright. Took less meds be clear of mind. Tried walking smaller walks more often. Every had neck spasms? I do not wish them on anyone. Until my cousin in her ultimate wisdom, hearing me whimper getting out of a chair, put her hands out and barked “STOP!”

I stayed in my pajamas that day. Got refunds for the workshops. Called for a cortisone shot and advice. Sat in the steam room every day. Lifted nothing but a teacup. Who stops in January? Prior to leaving I had cleaned the garage for five days, lifting everything, tirelessly making room for the new. That was just the first five days. It never occurred to me to stop until my body spoke up, something like hey girl, hair on fire, enough.

It worked.

For a tangle of reasons I am moving fast, for one my goal to have the memoir collection outlined soon. I was crushed that I simply could not function. But here is what happened, mostly during the sleepless and uncomfortable nights; my mind engaged. I wrote some great lines. Solved some tricky transitions. Fleshed out some characters. And not a letter was written down. The big picture was just that — a picture that I actually needed to have in this process.

Here I sit typing (yeah) and thinking and finally back online with some update on my silences. Have I learned anything? Hopefully.

How do you stop? Did you know we need to?

*Richard Stine, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.*

Alexandra Dane writes what lies deep in the marrow of our bones: life, disease, memory and hope — always hope. Winner of the Annie Dillard Creative Non Fiction award from The Bellingham Review this year, Alexandra Dane is also published in River Teeth and San Fedele Press’s American Writers Review. Her manuscript-in-progress explores coming of age, twice, at the mercy of cancer; once as a young caregiver for her mother and then as a patient herself. Her blog, http://www.alexandradanewrites.com explores the tiny big things that happen. She knits to think.

#amreading, Books 2023, Personal opinion

My 2023 Reading List.

Here is the list of the books I read, in paper form, in 2023. This is not a book blog as you know, but today these titles, posted on @alexandradanewriter each time I pick one up to read, deserve a list. Sometimes I post a thought, but mostly I just document them. My process for choosing varies: the cover, the title, culled from online bookstore recommendations, book group choices, friend suggestions, ones poached from a hostess’s bedside table, indie bookstore purchases, required reading from a workshop.

If you make it to the end, read my short short evaluation list. Happy New Year!

Foster — Claire Keegan

Journey of The Heart — Daily (started) Melody Beattie

A Glove Shop in Vienna + Other Stories — Eva Ibbotson

Book lovers — Emily Henry

The Comfort Food Diaries — Emily Nunn

Wintering — Katherine May

Things I Don’t Want to Know — Deborah Levy

In Five Years — Rebecca Serle

The Cost of Living — Deborah Levy

Real Estate — Deborah Levy

Women Holding Things — Maira Kalman

No Baggage — Clara Bensen

The Best American Food Writing 2022 — Edited by Sola El-Waylly

Red Paint — Sasha taq sablu LaPointe

Blow Your House Down — Gina Frangello

Stone blind — Natalie Haynes

Just A Mother — Roy Jacobsen

Miss Bunting — Angela Thirkell

Milk Blood Heat — Daniel W. Moniz

Enchantment — Katherine May

Artful Sentences: Virginia Tufte

The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

Poet Warrior — Joy Harjo

Dear Edward — Ann Napolitano

Ma and Me — Putsata Reang

Hang The Moon — Jeannette Walls

Walk the Blue Fields — Claire Keegan

Unraveling — Peggy Orenstein

Fellowship Point — Alice Elliot Dark

In The Distance — Hernan Diaz

Go As A River — Shelley Read

The Hand That First Held Mine — Maggie O’Farrell

The Feather Thief — Kirk Wallace Johnson

The Covenant of Water — Abraham Verghese

Yours Truly, The Obituary Writer’s Guide — James R. Hagerty

When A Crocodile Eats the Sun — Peter Godwin

Books + Island in Ojibwa Country — Louise Erdrich

Small Mercies — Dennis Lehane

Good Eggs — Rebecca Hardiman

You Could Make This Place Beautiful — Maggie Smith Memoir

Antartica — Claire Keegan

Demon Copperhead — Barbara Kingsolver

Flash Nonfiction — Dirty W. Moore

Meet Me in Atlantic City — Jane Wong

Shrines of Gaiety — Kate Atkinson

Second Star and Other Reasons for Lingering — Jody Gladding

The Bookbinder — Pip Williams

The Secret Keeper of Jaipur — Alka Joshi

The Librarianist — Patrick deWitt

The Perfumist — Alka Joshi

Lilac Girls — Martha Hall Kelly

Landslide — Susan Conley

Reinventing the Enemy’s Language — Joy Harjo

Tom Lake — Ann Patchett

Birnam Wood — Eleanor Catton

Midnight at The Blackbird Café — Heather Webber

The Women in Black — Madeleine St John

Trust — Hernan Diaz

beyond that, the sea — Laura Spence-Ash

Study for Obedience — Saish Bernstein

The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly — Margareta Magnusson

So Late in the Day — Claire Keegan

No Two Persons — Erica Bauermeister

The Lioness of Boston — Emily Franklin

Finding Muchness — Kobi Yamada

A Bird in Winter — Louise Doughty

Mad Honey — Jennifer Finney Boylan

The Abundance — Annie Dillard

the wren, the wren — anne Enright

The Reluctant Caregiver — Devon Ervin

Returning Light — Robert L. Harris

Stolen — Ann-Helén Laestadius

Big Heart, Little Stove, cookbook — Erin French

How To Walk — Tech That Hand

A Philosophy of Walking — Frédérick Gros

The Best American Food Writing 2023 — Mark Bittman

When Death Takes Something From you Give it Back — Maja Marie Aidt

Spark Birds — from Orion

Moon of the Crusted Snow — Waubgeshig Rice

The Land of Lost Things — John Connelly

When I sing, Mountains Dance — Irene Solà

Terrace Story — Hilary Leichter

Absolution — Alice McDermott

North Woods —Daniel Mason

Note: The following are solely based on my personal evaluations. All of the books are worthy. All books are worthy. I close each one at the end wiser, smarter and healthier.

Best book, Fiction: Tie between Go Like a River (L. Doughty) and A Bird in Winter (S. Read).

Best book, NonFiction: You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith

Worst book: The Lioness of Boston, Emily Franklin — too many liberties with the concept “historical fiction” about Isabella Stewart Gardener.

Need to read again: When Death Takes Something From you Give it Back — Maja Marie Aidt

Thought provoking: Moon of the Crusted Snow — Waubgeshig Rice. Dystopian yet close to home.

Moo.

I interrupted my Seattle trip to fly to a friend’s memorial and to hug his wife and son as many times as permissible. This morning, red-eyed, I am back at the airport, the man behind me in line saying ‘moo’ over and over again under his breath as we sort out our queues. I hoped he wasn’t setting an ominous tone for this leg of the journey. But it turns out the opposite was true.

After security, putting all my removables back on and accounting for my technology (yes, once I walked away without my laptop) I discovered that Starbuck’s had turned off the mobile order feature in Terminal A. Resigned to the line ahead I walked in and read my phone. To say the line was moving slowly would be to give it credit for moving at all. I struck up a conversation with a man in a badge ahead of me, turned out he had been in charge of Logan Airport Delta plane maintenance for thirty years, which led to the woman in front and myself letting him know we only flew Delta, so I thanked him, which led to a lot of talk about the new planes. We all had time. He was charming.

Behind me, I heard a Delta flight attendant ask if she could move ahead in line and I leaned over and waved her in front of me, which led the people ahead to wave her all the way to the registers. Not a single ‘moo’ to be heard. A team of giraffe-like volleyball women sparkled and laughed in spectacular nails behind me. Are we all just getting used to the travel curveballs?

When we finally reached the head of the line my Delta friend stepped forward and bought us all breakfast. He thanked us for our loyalty to Delta. We shook hands.

It was a good line kind of day.

To date: five, going on six memorials in 2023. This moment was a stamp of humanity I needed. Yesterday held tears and a deep feeling of mortality. Today I feel vulnerable and very, very alive. Maybe because of all the loss. Maybe I am overtired. Maybe because I am searching for the positive now everywhere I go, this morning was life affirming — though I have a handkerchief on the ready in my coat pocket.

A bunch of people being human who help each other. I will take it.

Thanks for reading, friend.

Chestnut season, Funerals, Kindness, weddings

Chestnuts

I read this morning it is chestnut season in Tuscany. I concentrated on the beauty of that sentence; there has been nothing but horror to visualize recently. I closed my eyes, saw fat brown nuts, the fingertips of broad leaves curling in the sun, woven baskets, my daughter’s favorite dessert marrons glacé — a feast of candied chestnuts, vanilla, whipped cream — piled on a china plate. A short respite.

To date in 2023: five memorials, a wedding and my niece expecting. I told the bride a few weeks ago she had no idea how bright and hopeful her wedding felt to me. I have already purchased and patterned a multitude of baby gifts months before the shower and due date. How do we find light when the world seems so dark, the bombs so thick, the death so unrelenting, the anger so hot?

I find I am very conscious of being alive.

I have mourned the lives of friends over and over this year, the next chapter feeling close and urgent and more worthy than before. How to spend it?

I would like more time with my family that makes us laugh. Books. Martinis. Published pieces. Walks in new green spaces. To see you all in person, face-to-face, and talk. To share meals and stories and ideas. A chance to practice kindness every day.

I waited an inordinately long time to curbside check a bag at the airport today, then let a woman go ahead of me as she arrived late and in a lather about her flight to LA. I had the time. I had the breath in my body. Letting her line hop just didn’t seem that big of a deal.

She explained she had been in the hospital for a week with her mother and it was hard to leave her. Her two bags turned out to be over-sized, each weighing more than fifty pounds. The baggage handler waived the fee.

Kindness feels good.

Pass it on.

care giving, Healing, self-care, Turnovers, Vermont

Under the sugarloaf.

Yesterday, as the sun kissed the fields good morning, a slender heron waited still and unblinking on the edge of the pond below my window, right where the long grass meets the water. For the first time since we arrived in the heart of Vermont ten days ago the deep green mountains were flecked with red and green. This is late August in Mad River Valley, a magical turnover season when sultry summer yields to fall, the high sun beginning to cast low shadow. Where I retreat to give care to my family member who has had surgery, grateful to a friend who has lent this sprawling house tucked between hills. While I wrap ice packs and count pills, make meals, load laundry and begin again, I am surrounded by unsurpassed beauty that has almost (almost!) made the long days of mending secondary.

A care giver is only as good as their own mental and physical health: I make lists, rise around the clock to check vitals and hunger and pain scale but I also take care of myself. Ten unread books stack on the dining room table — not so much thinking I would have spare time to read them all only to ensure I had just the right genre for the mood and fatigue roller coaster that comes with doing this for another person. There is a fresh dress or two in the closet for the down days. I take showers, grab long walks during nap time. There are digestive biscuits in the pantry. We are in the land of Ben + Jerry after all, so the freezer is stocked. We are lucky a daughter and husband can stop in with a dog to cuddle and make meals with me, distracting us from the tedium of healing and surgical trauma, the countdown until the cast comes off and the boot lightens the load.

Yellow finches sweep through the evergreens and snack on the coneflowers as the garden rests. There are short excursions this second week, a coffee shop where we can sit by a stream, a store up the road bursting with produce. The experience these weeks is not un-similar to the feeling of quarantine during covid — seclusion (for wound health), non-weight bearing slowing the days to a crawl, nothing on the calendar but shifting from couch to chaise to bed. Early bedtime. Early rising.

I fill my social media with photos of my walks. I choose the book with 715 pages and lug it to the stream. I rise at 4am and read, make notes and gaze out the window. Self-care goes hand-in-hand with giving care; be wary, if you are needed, of the Florence Nightingale myth. These days are work, there can be anger and misunderstanding. All of this is the reality of getting well, understandable and human. We get by it.

A mountain of trees rises over the pond, called by the locals ‘sugarloaf,’ the conical shape evoking the century-old method of storing sugar before cubes or bags. There is one in every valley, distinctive and hike-able. This morning, as the sun swept over dew so heavy it looked like frost, a doe and her fawn stepped out from underneath the sugarloaf shadow to drink from the pond, white tails flicking as I slid the door open to watch them watch me. The coffee machine splutters. The tea kettle steams. We turn over our bodies to what is in store for us.

Another day begins.

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