Tricks and Treats

 Our Harris / Walz yard sign was vandalized two weeks ago - someone spray-painted a black circle with a line through it on one side. This was vaguely sinister, though ineffective, since we turned the sign around and put the graffiti against our juniper bush. The vandal struck back, removing the sign entirely.  Unbeknownst to one another, my husband and I each ordered new signs and now we have three, two in the yard and one on the corner. Not sure why people feel entitled to remove private property from private property, but in our (otherwise safe) neighborhood they even steal Baby Jesus from the manger across the street, so I'm not surprised.

Not to rush ahead like CostCo and jump seasons . . . on Tuesday I realized that - for the first time since the kids were born - we had no pumpkins. Safeway was all out of pumpkins, so I bought two bags full of colorful gourds the size of pickleball balls, and heaped them in what I hoped was charming disarray on our porch. The next day I noticed that most of the gourds were gone, and I feared our sign vandal, or their cousin. What is this world coming to, I wondered. 

The gourd removal incident was cleared up yesterday when I was folding clothes and gazing out of the glass doors. A skinny squirrel ran by, holding one of my green gourds in his mouth and sprinting for all he was worth to the backyard. I jumped up to apprehend him (through the glass? I wasn't thinking) but he was already gone, with $12 worth of Halloween decor in his back pocket. Better a squirrel than a vandal, I thought, but then again, the vandal is like the squirrel, an irritating small rodent rather than a signifier of a larger threat.

So we're undecorated but ready for Halloween tonight. No costume could be scarier than the situation our country is currently in, but I hope at least for some distraction and a little candy - a treat to go along with our tricks.

Holy Now

 "This mornin' outside I stood / I saw a little red wing bird / Shining like a burning bush / And singing like a scripture verse. It made me want to bow my head / I remember when church let out. / How things have changed since then / Everything is holy now."

- Excerpt from song lyrics to "Holy Now" by Peter Mayer

Burning bushes glow fire engine red at peak season, and are highly visible now in the West due to our warm and sunshiney October. When I was in Montana last week with Mom, we saw a few burning bushes as well as maple trees and highlighter yellow larches. On my walks I did not see any red wing birds, but we had a family of deer rest each day in the shadow of the house, just outside of the basement windows and easily observable from the living room. My sister calls it "deer day care."

My favorite vista was Mama deer sitting a cautious distance from her three little ones, back turned to them and huge long ears on a swivel to catch any possible danger. The youngsters sat with an eye on Mama, turning their heads to stare at us whenever they heard foot falls or voices from inside the house. Mama wasn't too worried about us but she did jump to high alert when shots were fired across the bay. The echo of their hunting-season clarion call carried, and Mama eventually sat under the rose bushes against the house while her babies retreated to shelter under the buck brush. 

The Mama deer, with her combination of devotion and "leave me alone" attitude, resonated with me. I remember the days with little ones, days full of miracles and minutiae, when I wanted to gaze at my children with awe but also to escape for an hour or two. I wrote a blog post headed by Peter Mayer's "Holy Now" when the kids were in elementary school. The beautiful lyrics capture how we can see everything as miracle, and the song lyrics reached out and grabbed me in the car yesterday, tying those early days with young children to this special time with my Mom.

Spending long, quiet minutes with people you love, with space to appreciate our shared existence, always feels miraculous to me now. I loved the time with Mom, soaking in histories, laughter, jokes, walks. On our last walk we saw the deer family out in another yard, and one little guy came close to check us out. We got a photo of her head lowered in our direction, bright black eyes staring unblinkingly as her soft ears twitched. Then a noise spooked her and her thin legs and shiny hooves scrambled for purchase in the landscaping as she bounded away.

It was hard to say goodbye to Mom, to the special quiet moments. I had to leave her in the Missoula airport, water bottle at her side and cane in hand, to wait for my brother. I wanted to ask the TSA agents to look after her, just as I asked them to watch over Aden on her first solo flight. Time and the people we love are precious and fragile, and every time together seems like a miracle.

Mr Moon Shines Bright in Montana

 "Oh Mr. Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon / Won't you please shine down on me?

Oh Mr. Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon / Won't you come out from behind that tree?

Oh my life's in danger and I'm scared to run / There's a man behind me with a big shotgun

"Oh Mr. Moon, moon, bright and shiny moon / Won't you please shine down on me?"

-Lyrics to Mr. Moon song and nursery rhyme, unattributed

Last night I lay in the spare room bed in my parent's house, spotlit by the full supermoon beaming through my window. Toasty under my electric blanket, I watched the illuminated clouds pass by and remembered nights in this house with our babies, catching a blessed few hours of sleep in the dark and quiet while they slept (at last). The lyrics of "Mr Moon" came to mind and I was startled to remember the man behind the tree with a shotgun -- was there ever a time when that was appropriate for grade school? My third-grade class used to belt that line, singing out of tune with gusto, but that song would never be in the curriculum now.

I dreamt of coaching swimming, urging my swimmers to kick (an activity they do with reluctance) and woke myself up by flutter-kicking my heavy covers off the bed. Though my feet were imprisoned I had apparently been carrying on with some urgency, as I woke up sweating. After a chuckle at my foolishness I went back to dreamless sleep.

My siblings and I are rotating through visits with my incredible Mom, who is here recovering from a stroke that put her in the hospital in early September. She's doing well with her recovery, walking 5000 steps a day, eating a normal diet and working on her enunciation. Yesterday she used so many elite vocabulary words I felt like I was back in my Harvard English classes! 

Our visits here are a gift of time and presence, backlit by the beautiful scenery of upstate Montana. I have two robes on now, as it's only 60 degrees in the house, and the heavily frosted grass outside unmarked by deer hooves or geese's webbed feet. Yesterday we saw a brilliant full rainbow as we drove into a storm by the Mission Mountains and took it as a lucky omen for both the time together and the future. Under the benevolent gaze of the moon and double rainbows how could the time be anything but blessed?

Home Update for Almost-Empty Nesters

The cats and I hide out in my son's bedroom as dust rises from the first floor, sending us all into sneezing fits. Construction crew members stomp in and out of ground floor doors, ripping out damaged flooring and cleaning the subfloor before installing the new wood. This project - the first major work we've done on the interior of our home after twenty years of residence - is long-awaited but disconcerting. The cats grooming themselves next to me provided impetus after destroying the downstairs carpet, and we decided to update the house so we can enjoy it now rather than wait until we're close to a retirement-age sale.

Though we can be in the house while it's being updated, the noise and dust and general dismay of seeing our home dismantled makes for an uneasy week. Compounding my unsettled state are feelings of guilt over spending money, over the waste that we create by throwing out old materials. I've watched friends and neighbors do major projects over the years and always shied away, but twenty years of wear and tear shows in our baseboards, paint, and floors. When we moved here our two oldest children were three and eighteen months, now they are independent (almost) adults and we are (almost) empty-nesters. 

Bannisters treated like monkey bars, carpeting used for picnic blankets, proliferating litter boxes, and grooves worn by hundreds of thousands of exits and entrances all show in our home. We don't entertain much, but we certainly use our space. During the pandemic it became our world, home office, gym, and respite. I'm more attached than I've ever been to a residence - it's the longest I have ever lived in one place. Though we don't technically need the space any longer, and our kids' bedroom furniture is obsolete, we won't be leaving any time soon. 

We're even updating room arrangements and rugs, a change that dismays our youngest son. He wants everything to stay as it was, an impossible task in a world where sands shift hourly and attention flits from new to newer. My attention is focused on how few additional dollars might be required to create a sense of newness (maybe we can raid the kids' bedrooms), but excitement grips me as I think about change. Almost empty - nesters we might be, but our nest will be well-feathered.