SPRING ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

At this time of year it feels like every day is filled to bursting with life and events, and takes up more space than a normal day, making the weeks huge too.

Full moon comes the day after tomorrow, so we have another day of waxing moon to do some early planting of lettuce and brassicas etc. (They say the waning moon is less good for planting, less encouraging for growth.) Perhaps it's the full moon, or maybe it's just the arrival of May, a breakpoint in the calendar, but whatever the reason, it feels as if these coming days are full of departures and arrivals and more departures. It's as if the planets are shifting in their orbits, or life is moving to its summer schedule.

We're ready for this change, after the early bursting forth of trees and blossom, tulips a rich red or yellow, daffodils nearly over, and trees in new sparkling leaf. The dark pink, nearly purple, blooms on the large ornamental plum trees at the university are just coming out, almost pompous in their statement of "look-at-me" glory. They're spectacular, but not heartwarming in the way that more delicate unfoldings can be.

When I've been out for my small morning jogs in the last few weeks I've noticed the sharp shadows of the tree skeletons on the road and sidewalks and greening grass. Now that clarity and structure have gone, blurred by leaves and blossoms, not to return until the last leaves have fallen in late November. These markers feel significant every year. Maybe that's why churches and religions of all kinds have such an attachment to the calendar of festivals, the ritual passing of each day of the year, each season of the underlying story. It's a way of marking time and committing to each day.

Our early ancestors must have marked the seasons and subseasons carefully, for sure. It's essential to survival in a pre-industrial situation, and it may yet be essential even to those of us living in modern post-industrial environments. But even if we don't NEED to tune in for our immediate practical survival, surely, in my attachment to these seasonal markers, to knowing the phases of the moon and being attentive to natural cycles, I'm connecting to some atavistic need for a sense of order, trying to find coherence in a chaotic world.

But back to the departures and arrivals schedule for a moment. We have friends leaving tonight for a wedding in Isanbul; another arriving tomorrow from Budapest after a vocanic ash delay. In the next week friends are heading variously to Merlefest (bluegrass etc music in North Carolina); Paris; Berlin; Shanghai; and Minnesota. Finally, looming large and happily, is Tashi's departure on Sunday for seven weeks away in Greece and Italy.

I am thrilled that he gets to have that out-on-the-road feeling of exhilaration mixed with a little anxiety. Yes it's a tired metaphor for life, but still a useful one. These days there may be email access in most places, and ATM's are where money comes from (rather than a tattered roll of AmEx travellers' cheques), and phoning internationally is easy, but still, an open-ended trip to places far away is a huge adventure. Tashi has had his head in the ancient world for a number of years now, though this year has been the most intensive, with courses in Ancient Greek and in Latin. So he has a long list of places he'd like to see and places he can already imagine.

When I went to Greece long long ago I was pretty ignorant of Greek mythology and history. (I still am, rather disgracefully so.) Instead I was curious about daily life, loved the olives and the fresh tomato and feta salads. The first salad I ate, near the Corinth Canal the evening of the day we got off the ferry at Patras, was stunning. There was souvlaki too, tender little pieces of lamb grilled over a simple open fire. No later salad or souvlaki on the trip could match the heart-stopping deliciousness of that first Greek meal eaten on Greek soil.

For Tashi, lamb and tomatoes and olives are foods to be avoided or navigated around, rather than relished. So I guess he'll be eating a lot of yogurt and bread... as he walks a lot of miles in antique shoes.

By the time he's back in eight weeks we'll be almost at the solstice and yet another full moon. Time enough to think of summer. For now it's the green of spring, the promise of tender asparagus and ramps (I stir-fried chopped ramps with some crisp local black kale the other day, a real spring-on-a-plate kind of dish that went beautifully with grilled pork sausage and grilled local lamb), that fills my imaginative horizon and puts a lightness in my step and a smile on my face.

Oh, and do remember to have a look at the moon, a long oval this evening, and soon to be roundly full, marking our time in our place.

A POSTSCRIPT: There's an article in ZesterDaily (do you know it? if not, have a look, a weekly online newspaper of good solid and interesting food journalism) by Robyn Eckhardt, with photos by Dave Hagerman, about the threat to Chiang Mai's Gat Luang, the amazing market, alive at all hours, in Chiang Mai. Anyone who has spent time living in Chiang Mai knows it and loves it; many people rely on it for their livelihood. On the first night of immersethrough, we head there to eat Kanom jiin, and then later we shop there in the daytime, always a knockout experience for people. Here's the link to Robyn's article: http://zesterdaily.com/shopping/473-endangered-thai-treasure

SWIMMING IN THE RIVER OF TIME

I feel I've been far away, but in fact I've just made a four day car trip to Ottawa, my home-town, with Dom and Tashi.  The drive is less than five hours, but was transporting.

It's mid-July, my birthday time, and I love to mark it somehow, so that later I can think, ah, yes, THAT year I was doing such-and-such... (So as I said to Dom, twenty-two years ago, I was pregnant with you and walking up the pass that is part of the circumambulation of Mount Kailas, in western Tibet, and here you are tall and grown and hopefully undamaged by those early in utero exertions!)  

This year we slept in a friend's cabin on a hill above the Gatineau River, on a chilly night (but we had sleeping bags and quilts and were comfy).  On my birthday morning I could get up early and walk down through the trees to the gleaming wide river, slip off my sweater and sarong, and step into the water.  I was bare, but warm with the remnants of sleep.  The river was warmer than the cold morning air, so it was soft and welcoming, slippery smooth on my skin.

I love swimming in the Gatineau.  It flows south into the Ottawa River at Ottawa, and its water carries some suspended clay in it, making it almost silky to the touch.  Any place that we spend our childhood has magical connections for us I think, and for me the Gatineau sure has those.  There's a before-thought kind of familiarity and welcome to all of it: the feel of the water as I first sink into it, the subtle cool scent of the air over the water, the slight ooze of the river bottom as I push off to start swimming out toward the far shore.  

I don't actually swim across the river, and have rarely done so.  It's very wide.  When I was a kid we would occasionally swim across, but only if accompanied by an adult in a rowboat, for safety, and always it seemed so far and such a marathon.  I think I'm in better shape, and also am a more confident (though not a more elegant!) swimmer, so the crossing looks less daunting to me now.  But I don't do it.  Instead I swim out then luxuriate and float and paddle and swim a little more and let myself just BE there.  Heaven.

Once back out, that birthday morning a few days ago, I wrapped myself in a towel, slipped the sweater on top, and walked over on the path to my cousin's dock.  Under it the water makes a lapping sound as little wavelets reach the rocks and shore.  I lay there in the sun, getting slowly warmed and feeling connected to and almost inside all the times I've been in that place, listening to that water.

But of course the water I heard before, all those other times, is somewhere else on the planet or in the air now, and the dock I lay on as a child has been replaced by a fresh dock with fresh planks.  As always there's that lesson about life, which can seem the same, and feels the same but not the same, feels continuous but also renewed and altered over time.

So as the river flows by, we step into it at the same spot, but into different water, and we too are different, not the same person who stepped in yesterday, or ten years ago, or fifty (fifty!!) years ago.  But inside I feel like the same person; I'm still me, aren't I?  

These are birthday thoughts, or thoughts for the new year, when we ponder life and time and change...

And so it felt entirely right that on that trip to Ottawa, apart from the pleasure of swimming, and of seeing old friends, and of having travelling time with Dom and Tashi, I also had a visit with my aunt.  She is eighty-seven now, lives in a present that is ephemeral to her, and with the past just a vague impression, so conversations are tangential and like those inside a dream state.  She now looks very like her father, my grandfather, as he did in his late eighties, especially the way her mouth shapes words as she speaks.  It's a precious glimpse of the past.  I found myself in tears almost, touched by that family connection, and, once again, by the intertwining in life of continuity and change.