Life as a Garden

I can feel the moisture from the damp grass seeping into the fabric of my jeans as I kneel, pulling up the sunflower seedlings that have sprouted beneath the bird feeder. I push my hair back and accidentally smear a bit of mud across my cheek. A row of house finches sits on the telephone line above my head, calling to one another as they watch me work, waiting for a chance to swoop in and scatter more seeds as they feast.  Sure enough, the moment I stand up and move away they fly in.
 
 It is so early that most of the neighbors are still asleep and as I work it feels as though I have the street to myself. Deadheading the roses, snipping lavender buds to dry, staking up a drooping delphinium, I am alone with my thoughts and I relish the quiet.  

 If you were to ask me if I am a gardener, I would say no. I never quite feel as though I am entitled to own the title. I don’t know enough. The evidence of my mistakes surrounds me each time I step out my back door. That phlox was planted too close to the front of the border. This rose is too shaded. That Hosta is wilting in a spot with too much sun. I am constantly planting and transplanting, adjusting to the demands of my tiny space. I do and then undo and do again. And that, I have decided, is precisely the appeal. 

The harshest lesson life teaches us is that there are few do-overs. We get one chance and then have to live with our mistakes. We make our beds and learn to lie in them. But a flower bed is another story. We make it, unmake it and then make it again. As often as we please. This, I think as I stand and survey what I have done, I can control. There is not much else in my life that I can say that about.
    
Another appeal of a garden is that it gives back. It returns the love we plant into the soil. A garden allows us to chart our progress. This is a rare thing in an ordinary life. Most of us work at marriages, at parenting and careers without the space and leisure to step back and take measure of what we’re doing. It’s only later, sometimes too much later, that we can see our mistakes, but by then its too late. But my garden guides me as I go. Too little water, too much sun, not enough fertilizer and I know. All I have to do is take the time to really look. And then I can make it right.
    
There is a spot on the patio where I can stand and trace the growth of a young tree I planted this spring , measuring its height against the back of the garage on the lot behind mine. Each day its uppermost branches stretch a but more and soon it will be as tall as the structure behind  the fence. The tree will be here long after I’m gone and it pleases me to watch it grow.
   
 I can’t wish away the the physical effects of the years behind me. I cannot undo the mistakes I have made in my life. But what I can do is step out the back door each morning, coffee in hand, and take a good long look at what’s in front of me. And if something isn’t right I can dig right in and start all over again.


Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s writes for The Spokesman-Review. This essay appeared in The Spokesman-Review's "Pinch" edition. Cheryl-Anne is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Doing nothing? Nothing doing.

       

         The plan was to do nothing. To spend a week enjoying my garden, relaxing in a quiet house and taking advantage of the solitude.

​As usual, I didn’t follow the plan.

For one whole week I was going to have the place to myself and I was going to enjoy my tidy little house and not lift a finger if I didn’t want to. ​

​The problem is, I just can’t sit still that long and almost immediately I was surrounded by a chaos and clutter. 

         For some reason, I can’t remember what I was looking for, I went to the basement storeroom and dug around in a couple of boxes. In the process I unearthed, among other things, a package of slides that had been missing for several years and I completely lost track of time while I held paper-framed squares of film up to the light. Of course I brought the box upstairs with me and soon they were scattered across the top of the dining room table. I didn’t want to put them away again until I got them marked and sorted so they're still there.

​The next day I realized that this would be a good time to wash summer’s dust and dirt out of the slipcovers that cover the sofa and chairs in the living room. Now the room is tumbled with cushions and furniture wearing only its white muslin “underwear.”

​The rug store called to say the old rug I’d bought online and had cleaned was ready, so I picked it up and dropped the long, heavy, rolled carpet in a corner. I’ll put it down after I wrestle the furniture back into the slipcovers. 

​I ran a few errands one day and couldn’t resist stopping by one of my favorite antiques stores. Wouldn’t you know, just as I was leaving with empty hands, one of the dealers walked in with the little bedside table I’d been searching for. I brought it home and put it in place, but now the old table has no place so it’s pushed into a corner until I can take it down to the store room. And I’m afraid of what will happen if I go back down there.

​I woke up one cool morning and pulled out a sweater. I decided, while I was at it, to put away all the linen and lightweight pieces and bring out the rest of my sweaters and winter clothing. It was easier to sort everything while it was all out and soon there was a big pile of giveaway items in the dining room, beside the table still littered with photographs.  

​I watched a movie one night and instead of making a nest on the sofa I organized the linen closet while it played. More sorting and a stack of old towels and sheets added to the giveaway pile.

​I have no one but myself to blame for this mess, but the tidy little house I was going to enjoy is now a wreck. And the book I was dying to read?  Still unopened on the (new) little table by the bed.

​Why is it some of us just can’t sit still? Can’t leave well enough alone? I think of myself as semi-retired. I’ve stopped working full time and have even cut back on my part-time writing assignments. I wanted more free time to take care of myself and the flexibility to enjoy time with my family. But for the life of me, I just can’t get the knack of it. If there isn’t a project, I invent one.

​My solo staycation ends tomorrow. I have a dinner party coming up. And my house is a disaster.

​ I have a lot of work to do, but this time I mean it. I’m going to get everything straightened up, put away and organized and I’m going to leave it that way. 

​Right after I paint the bathroom. I hadn’t noticed how drab it looks.

This essay first appeared in Spokane's "Prime" magazine and in The Spokesman-Review's "Pinch" edition. Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard each week on Spokane Public Radio. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Bird Watching for Beginners

      My husband handed me a large lightweight box to open on Christmas morning and for once he had me stumped. I hadn’t asked for anything in particular and I couldn’t imagine what he’d put under the tree.

When I peeled away the wrapping paper I saw it was an oversized finch feeding station, three long tubes dissected by perches for 24 birds. The big station made the individual feeders I already had hanging--each with no more than 6 perches--look ridiculously small. He helped me fill the tubes with the Nijer seed and with my son's help hung it from a branch in the tree outside the big front window of our Cape Cod cottage. They teased me about the possibility of ever seeing it full of birds. 

But the next morning, as light began to filter through the darkness, I was up and I looked out the front window. There were already a few visitors to the feeder—the proverbial early birds—and by the time the sun was completely up, what sun there was on such a cold grey winter day, there was a busy goldfinch or pine siskin on every perch with at least another dozen flitting around the tree waiting for a turn or trying to bully someone into abandoning their spot.
    
Snow began to fall, drifting into soft piles on the limbs, and the tree was alive with tiny, hungry, beautiful birds.
   
One by one as my son and daughters, home for the holiday, woke up and made their way downstairs, they walked by the window and stopped to comment on what was going on in the branches. Their delight mirrored my own.

On New Year’s Eve we discovered the small frozen body of a bird beneath the feeder. I don’t know if it succumbed to the bitter cold or was the victim of a predator, maybe it died of old age, but after a holiday season that was marked by our family’s own loss, the tableau at the feeder just outside the window was a reminder that life can be unfair, and that even when there’s enough for all, not everyone is strong enough to survive.
    
Now, weeks into the new year, with everyone back to work or away at school I have the house to myself and the birds, the finches, iskins and chickadees are still busy in the tree. They are good company.
   
Writing is a solitary occupation. Most of my work is done alone in a quiet house. The quick, determined movement of the birds as they feed is a welcome distraction when I look up from my computer. Off and on throughout the day I find myself standing in front of the wide north-facing window in my living room, a hot cup of tea in my cold hands, daydreaming as I watch the birds fly in and out of the tree.
    
It is not lost on me that what I am enjoying is actually their struggle to survive. The need to fuel the constant movement that keeps them warm. their constant vulnerability to cats and other predators that stalk and hunt them, mocks my search for the right word or anxiety about meeting some kind of trivial deadline.
     
Every day I watch the birds and they keep a wary eye on me as I stand at the window. And the fluttering on either side of the glass is really nothing more than the work of getting up and going on.
   
Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Holiday reality isn't wrapped with ribbon and pretty paper

 

 This column appeared in The Spokesman-Review on December 5 2005, and is one of my most popular public radio audio essays. I think that's because it addresses something most of us learn sooner or later: Life, even when we wrap it in pretty paper and decorate it with bows and ribbon, isn't always pretty. CAM

My daughter came to me fighting back tears. She hovered at my side for a moment before drooping dramatically and bonelessly, the way girls do so well, onto the sofa beside me.

“What’s wrong,” I asked, warily because I never know what’s coming.

“I don’t know,” she said with a long sigh. “Christmas just isn’t the same anymore.”

It was my turn to heave a deep sigh. There were still Thanksgiving leftovers in the refrigerator, for goodness sake. It wasn’t even December.

I offered hugs and sympathy, and gave a little pep talk about how we see things differently as we age and it’s really up to us as individuals to make any day, not just the holidays, wonderful, but what I wanted to say was, “Oh yes it is. Christmas is exactly the same.”

The truth is the picture-perfect Christmas my child was pining for never really existed. It was the magic castle at the top of a fairytale beanstalk that I planted for her.

She was blissfully unaware of the times the checkbook wouldn’t balance or I was reduced to tears over a must-have toy that couldn’t be found anywhere in town.

She didn’t worry about the tree that died weeks before Christmas and stood in the living room like ornamented kindling.

It all looked perfect to her.

In some ways the holiday season is a beautiful but empty package. We’re driven by the belief that we can create this one perfect day, or season, and the warmth generated by it will carry us through the rest of the year. We spend, bake and shop. We decorate around worry, unhappiness and dissatisfaction pretending they aren’t there.

As my daughter rested her head on my shoulder, I recalled a conversation with a friend. We met for coffee, and she told me she was getting a divorce. “The thing is, the marriage has been over a long time” she told me, slowly stirring the lukewarm coffee in her cup. “But every year I’d make this gut-wrenching decision to leave and then I’d think about the holidays, and I just couldn’t do it.”

It was bad enough to know she was ruining her children’s lives, but the holidays, too? That was too much.

Facing the truth that the divorce would tarnish every Christmas, and every other special occasion the family would celebrate in the future, she surrendered. It was that important to her.

Year after year she put on another perfect Christmas for a family that was broken but just didn’t know it.

Finally, no amount of scotch tape and silk ribbon could keep it all together. The marriage fell apart, she left – in the summer – and the family learned how to do things, how to do everything, differently.

It wasn’t pretty or perfect, and it wasn’t easy, but it eventually worked. She told me later, after she had remarried and reconciled with the child who had struggled the most with the situation, that if she hadn’t been so focused on making perfect memories for her children she might have made better decisions about a lot of things.

As I petted and consoled my daughter I tried to tell her what we so often gloss over this time of year: the truth.

Nothing shines quite as bright in real life as it does in our memory.

Growing up is hard because it means our eyes are opened to what a gift box won’t cover. We make peace with what was and what is and, eventually, move on to caring more about making the ones we love happy.

What I wanted to tell my child, but I’m not sure I got across, is that the real gift of any season is learning to find a way to see the magic in the holidays – in every day – even when you know better.

Falling into Winter

I was standing on the walkway in front of my house, watering the climbing roses that grow along the big front window, when I began to pay attention to a particular sound. I couldn't quite place what I was hearing. It was like raindrops but the sky was big and blue, without a cloud. It was like a wave of applause, but I was alone on the street. 

Still listening,  I stopped and looked around and realized it was the sound of leaves falling. Not just a few autumn leaves, drifting lazily down to the ground. It was a shower of big, curling, gold leaves from the towering horse chestnut trees on the corner. 

There was no wind to shake them free, but one after another the leaves on the uppermost branches simply let go, dropping straight down with purpose, sometimes knocking down leaves on lower branches as they went.

I stood where I was for a moment, struck by the show. The cascade of broad papery leaves increased as more and more leaves fell to the ground.

It was as if the big trees had simply shrugged them off, like weary mothers tired of clinging leafy children. 

The spiked husks holding the smooth brown chestnuts had already fallen and for weeks the squirrels had been busy, running across wires overhead, holding the prize in their mouths as they hurried back to the cache with more provisions for winter. I'd watched them bury chestnuts in my flower beds and in the potted plants around the patio. We’d gathered a big bowl to put out as squirrel treats in the deepest part of winter, to make amends for the nuts I’d taken out of the pots on the patio.

All that remained of the trees' industry of spring and summer and early fall--the unfurling of soft green, the messy blooms, the abundance of chestnuts--were the golden leaves. And now, one after another they fell from the branches and collected around my feet. 

I pulled my phone from my pocket and recorded a short video, a private movie of a splendid moment. 

How often had I looked up and commented that the trees seemed to have shed their leaves overnight. One day the canopy of color was there and the next it was gone. 

I felt fortunate, as is so often the case with nature, to have been in the right place at the right time to see something beautiful. In just minutes, the branches were bare with only the most tenacious leaves left behind. All was quiet again. 

I could imagine each tree heaving a great sigh. Her work was done for the year. Now she could rest. Now she could sleep.  

The calendar might disagree but I could not argue with what the trees were telling me. Fall is over and winter is coming. 

I walked back to my own yard, back to the roses, kicking at the leaves on the ground just to see them to scatter, and I thought about the things we see and the things we miss as we go about our day.

Before long the city's sweepers will scour the street and take away the litter of leaves. One morning, any day now, the gold will be gone and we will wake to the season's first snow, to a dusting of winter white on bare black branches. 

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Grounded by Love

My granddaughter walked through the door and ran up to me. 

“You’re not on a plane anymore!” she said as she wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her tightly.

“No. I’m here with you.”

She's growing and she's hungry these days. The first thing she wanted was a snack: Carrots. 

“More carrots, Nana!”

While she ate she chattered, swinging her legs, wrapping her feet around the cared legs of her old oak “youth” chair. I stood at the kitchen counter peeling carrots and cutting them into toddler-friendly slices.

After she’d eaten her fill of vegetables and hummus, she asked to take a walk. The day had been cloudy and cool and already the light was beginning to fade. We put on our jackets and she asked to take her balloon along. The shiny orange Jack-O-Lantern was a gift from one of her aunts and she wears it like jewelry.

I tied the end of the ribbon that trails from the mylar balloon around her right wrist, to keep it from floating away as we walked. She also wanted her “flower,” a plastic tie-hanger that surfaced after a closet clean-out. 

The object, white plastic ‘“spokes” that hold and separate a man’s ties, is curved at the end to fit over a closet rod. When held upside down, it looks exactly like a daisy. But you’d never know this, of course, without seeing it through a toddler’s eyes. 

So, ornamented with the pumpkin balloon, holding the plastic “flower,” we stepped out into the chilly late-afternoon air. 

She automatically turned toward the park, heading for the playground we visit most afternoons, but I knew our light jackets wouldn’t be enough as the temperature dropped. So I steered us in the opposite direction, down the street and deeper into the neighborhood.

She slipped her hand into mine and I tucked my sleeve over us like a glove. As we walked she chattered the way small children do. She stopped to look at the maple leaves collaged across the sidewalk, exclaiming at the yellows and reds. A dog barked and she stopped to look around, trying to pinpoint the “Boof.”

At the corner, intimidated by the ribbon of headlights threading up and down the hill, she stopped and pressed closer to me.

“Too many cars!” she said and tightened her grip on my hand.

We waited for a break in the home-from-work traffic and crossed the street. The next block is canopied by tall sycamore trees, a tunnel of gold this time of year, and the lawns and sidewalks are littered with fallen leaves. Some homeowners had cleared their sidewalks but others hadn’t yet caught up and in places the leaves were ankle-deep. I waded in and kicked my way through. This startled her. She stopped, again, and looked down at her feet. Then she did the same thing, pushing the leaves ahead with each step.

“We are kicking leaves!” she shouted. “We kick the leaves!”

We walked another block and then crossed to the other side of the street and turned back toward my house. Again and again we plowed through leaves when we found them and she laughed out loud each time.

We crossed the busy street again, not so threatening now that the rush was over, and, what with one interesting thing after another, it took another quarter of an hour to walk the last block home. 

 I was, I realized, in that shining second, as happy as I have ever been. I’d been given the gift of uncomplicated time with a small child, something I’ve missed since my own have grown up and away. 

 I have always been a little afraid of the secret part of me that is not unlike the balloon tied to my granddaughter's wrist. I could have floated away, drifting from one adventure to another, but my children were my ballast. In becoming a mother I chose to tie myself to them and that grounded me. And now, when I am free again, able to fly if I want to, I find myself making the same choice again.

We walked up the front steps, past the pumpkin on the stoop, and through the front door. Still holding hands we stepped into the warmth of the house. That must have triggered something in her memory because she turned to me again.

“You’re not on a plane anymore,” she said with a smile.

“No. I’m here with you,” I replied, smiling down at her. 

And of all the wonderful places I have ever been, of all the places I would like to go, none is, or could ever be, as fine as where I was at that moment.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

The Sweetest Gift of Summer

When I was a girl, after dinner and after chasing lightning bugs to fill the mayonaise jar I would put beside my bed so I could watch them flicker and blink until I fell asleep, I would sometimes lie on my back in the field next to my house and watch the stars come out. 

Never mind that the grass stuck to my sweaty legs and mosquitoes hummed in my ears, it was a fine show. Later, as a mother with young children, we piled onto a daybed on the patio and counted satellites and shooting stars, calling out each time we spotted one.

Now, with no lightning bugs to catch and no small children to keep me company, it is my habit to end the day on a lounge chair on the patio behind my house. I stretch out and stare at the sky until one by one the stars start to appear. The other night, as I lay there, I looked up between two pine trees in my neighbor’s yard and noticed a star just at the inner edge of one of the trees. Something distracted me and I looked away but when I looked back at the space between the trees, I noticed the star had moved, or, to be more precise, the planet on which I was lazing, had moved. The star was not as close to the tree as it had been. Time, and the star, had moved on while I was lost in thought.

This was no surprise. All throughout the day I look at my watch or the clock on my computer and I’m surprised to see how many minutes have flown while I was working or daydreaming. But alone in the dark, the ability to mark the passage of time by the stars was somehow satisfying. An ancient pleasure.

The neighborhood grew quiet as everyone left their backyards to move indoors. The parade of people walking dogs to the park on the sidewalk in front of my house ended. The cats gave up chasing insects in the grass and were curled up beside my chair. My little dog was snoring at my feet. 

I could, if I listened closely, hear the sounds of traffic in the distance; a siren wailed somewhere downtown, a plane flew overhead.  Slowly, steadily, the moved star to the other tree. And then it was gone.

Making my way indoors, putting away the cushion so the cats wouldn’t take the chair as soon as I left it, picking up the book I’d been reading that afternoon, I closed the door behind me. But n a way I could never have been when I was a girl, and was often too busy to comprehend when I was a young mother, I was aware of the sweetest gift: time.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

The Girl in the Garden

For a few minutes tonight, I was 8 years old again.

After dinner, I stayed outside playing in the back yard until I suddenly realized the sun was long gone and it was getting too dark to see clearly. The lights in the house were bright through the windows.

Still unwilling to go inside and let the day fade away completely, I sat on the back step listening to the birds sing out in the dark as they called it a day. Something must have dropped down my collar while I was digging around under the rose bushes and I wriggled as I tried to find whatever was tickling me. My hair was tangled with leaves and petals.

The air was cool and soft and smelled like flowers and dirt. My cats stalked imaginary prey in the grass. I was tired and dirty and perfectly content to be exactly where I was at that moment.

When I finally opened the back door and stepped inside, I didn't feel at all like a grandmother. I felt like a girl who'd made the most of a long summer afternoon.

That's the beauty of this stage I call my third life. Sometimes, when I least expect it, I turn a corner and find myself.

Anchored at home

Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap Subject: Prague canal as seen from Charles Bridge.

March 13, 2010 Special to S-R Pinch


I am, and I have to believe it is true of most others, two people in one body. On one side, I am a contented hermit. I love nothing better than time at home surrounded by the rooms full of furniture and paintings and books that I have collected or been given, with the telephone, television and computer turned off. I love the warm tones of the paintings on the walls, the deep crimson rugs on the oak floors, the soft silk of the curtains that frame the window’s familiar view, the bright colors of the pottery and pillows.

Some of the things around me have been with me for as long as I can remember. They are, when I close my eyes and think about it, the inanimate images that come to mind when I think about the word home.

But on the other side, I am a wanderer. I am restless. I want out of the armchair. I want to go places and see new worlds and do things I haven’t done before. I read what other travelers write and I get itchy feet. I covet their freedom. I follow their blogs and turn down pages in books and magazines and long for a chance to follow in their footsteps. I want to blaze my own trail.



I tear glossy pages out of magazines and pin them to my bulletin board. I buy postcards and frame them. I keep photographs of exotic places on my cellphone and computer. I keep a list of sights I need to see and a diary of places I’ve been. And when the opportunity for travel presents itself, I hitch a ride without a backwards glance. My suitcase is always ready.

The trick, of course, is finding a way to reconcile the two halves of one heart.

Without travel, across the world or just across the state, we would never know how it feels to be truly homesick. To long for the comforting presence of those we love. To experience the sense of belonging that rushes toward us when we open a door and walk back into the place we call home.

Without a home base, travel is frightening. Like spacewalking without a tether to the mother ship. It is moving from one island to another; no bridge between.

It helps to remember that a good life is all about balance. Happiness and heartache. Light and dark. Thrilling adventure and quiet, contented moments in a chair by the window.

A life on the road with no home to return to is a sad thing. As is living without even an occasional escape to a new view.

It’s good to get away. But only when you have a place, and people, to call you back home.


Cheryl-Anne Millsap is a freelance columnist for The Spokesman-Review. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and her essays can be heard each week on Spokane Public Radio. To read past Home Planet columns go to http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/homeplanet