I blink, and it happens. I find myself here yet again…another birthday. The end of a personal calendar year, the start of a new page, a new age. Time to take stock of where I am, where I have been, where I am going. A favorite saying comes to mind, “No matter where you go, there you are.” I am also fond of the saying (usually uttered in the context of a hike gone awry) “I am never lost…I always know where I am, I just may not know how I got here, or where I am going next.” These sayings seem to sum up my life, at least lately. The feeling that no matter how much I plan, no matter how organized I try to be, no matter what good intentions or illusion of control or imagined mastery of circumstances, I find myself in a place that was not on my planned itinerary, in a foreign land that does not appear on the map in hand…
Our travels often take us to unexpected places, and the lessons learned along the way can be profound. We can share those lessons by telling our stories. This is a story about a hummingbird, frozen in ice. This is a story about grief. This is a story about loss, and change, and self-preservation. This is also a story about picking yourself up, finding your strength, fulfilling your destiny, and realizing your worth.
The focus of my year was selling my home and moving. People do this every day. I make my living from people selling, buying, moving. I myself have done it before, many times. This time, though, it felt different…it was different. The timing and circumstances were not of my choosing nor under my control, the outcome was less than I had hoped for, and the move represented much more than a change of address; I felt I was closing a chapter in my life that encompassed the magic time of being a family, of raising children, of making a home and building traditions. I just did not anticipate how much it was going to knock me off balance…
My husband and I bought the house in question eighteen years ago. It was less than a five minute walk away from the first home we had purchased, one that we had just finished remodeling. That first home was a perfectly nice house, with a beautiful water view, and we were very proud of it. We could have easily stayed there, raised our family, and been perfectly content. Except that we weren’t perfectly content, because we are not that kind of people.
The new house was in desperate need of remodeling, but it was on a sandy beach, and the location was perfect for our boys. The property was filled with mature trees and shrubs, and I truly could not wait to get my hands on the garden. We moved in during July…Ruben was seven, and Carter was six months old. I remember taking Carter out to the beach the first day, and setting him in the sand. He fussed and cried, and didn’t like the sand that stuck to his hands and feet. That would all change, though, and they spent the next sixteen years playing outside all day, swimming, paddling, hitting rocks into the water with bats, building forts and trapezes out of logs and driftwood, running back and forth to nearby homes of friends and cousins.
We spent many hours watching the never ending parade of wildlife. One of my first memories there was of all of us lying across our bed, watching in amazement as an eagle consumed a fish in the tree just outside our window. We saw whales, porpoises, seals, sea lions, river and sea otters, countless birds and fish. We hosted large family gatherings, holiday dinners, summer parties. It was the life we had dreamed of, being able to provide our boys with the childhood experiences that we each had enjoyed growing up, and more. We had purchased the new place with the same idea of remodeling it and selling it after a few years, and moving on to another beachfront house. However, the universe had other plans. After the housing market turned, we knew we wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long while, so we settled in, and a short term investment became a home.
While the house and beach were things we all enjoyed, the love affair with the garden was mine alone. The property was on a slope, and the access to the house was either by a tram, or down a winding stairway. The hill was like a miniature rain forest. A wall of green, a tunnel through graceful rhododendrons, vine maples, huckleberries, dogwoods and azaleas. There was moss everywhere, and tiny bunches of fragrant violets, maidenhair ferns, and lily of the valley in every crack of the crooked staircase. I would spend hours perched on the hill, pruning, weeding, pretending to be busy with chores while really just bird watching, admiring the water from above, listening to the sounds of the wind, the changing tide, the gulls and eagles. I planted as if I would be there for a lifetime…perennials, fruit trees, Japanese maples, berry patches. I made rose trellises and fences and vine-covered tee-pees out of driftwood logs, and when they rotted and fell, I turned them into wildlife habitats, hidden by thornless blackberries, honeysuckle, clematis and climbing roses. It was a garden of overgrown exuberance; lush, green, wild, and full of birds, bunnies and butterflies. Two years in a row, I was blessed with the experience of watching hummingbirds build nests, one year to a successful hatch, another with a heartbreaking loss in a storm. I knew each branch that the hummingbirds favored for their respite, where the heron and eagles perched, where the chickadees and bushtits nested, where I could always find a glittering ball of golden baby spiders in the spring. Where the baby bunnies hid in the dappled shade, behind the ferns and under the elderberry. It was my own private wildlife sanctuary.
Nothing lasts forever. Kids grow up and move out, or are happier playing sports and video games than playing on the beach or investigating the garden. Loans mature, terms are not always negotiable, and the housing market is a mysterious beast with a mind of its own. Eventually, we put the house on the market, and began three years of living in limbo. Every spring and fall I would do the full yard cleanup, and each time, I thought I was saying goodbye to each plant and tree for the last time. We packed up much of the house, thinking we would only have things in storage for a couple of months. Two years passed. We finally got an offer, which in the end, took another eight months to close. While we were waiting, it was easy to live in denial. I was still thinking that our usual luck and good fortune would continue to follow us, and that maybe we would never really have to move.
In my lifetime, I have weathered numerous seasons of grief. Some have resulted in a fully frozen state, others just prolonged periods of permafrost. I wonder, sometimes, if we ever fully recover from grief, or if it just becomes a part of the fabric of our being. Of all of events that have caused me grief in my life, none has come as a surprise. Deaths, broken hearts, life changes over which I had no control, I could see them all coming. In each instance, from the moment of diagnosis of terminal illness, or a gut feeling coming to fruition, I could imagine the outcome. Over and over, all variations, trying the pain and discomfort on for size. I would imagine how I would feel, how the absence of a person or thing would affect my days, how a change would color every aspect of my existence. I have a very vivid imagination, so the scenarios were varied and endless. I would test the threshold of my pain, and worse, far worse, I would imagine the pain of others. These practice runs usually were worse than the actual event.
Once the reality of moving set in, I began to run the tests of pain, and the ice began to form around me. It was a never ending litany of lasts…the last Christmas, the last first day of school pictures, the last time we would lie in bed on a Sunday morning, relishing the view. The last night I would track the full moon as it slipped past the windows to set on the water, sending a comet of sparkles to me through the darkness. The last morning that I would wake up to the smell of salt water and the sound of the waves lapping below my window. The last time I would walk down the deck stairs, drag my kayak over the rocks, and paddle away from my home. The last time my oldest son would visit us there. Like running your tongue over a cut in your mouth, I could not stop, no matter how raw it got. At the end of Ruben’s last visit, as we were getting ready to drive him to the airport to return to his home in New Zealand, I wept as I watched him from the kitchen. He had gone out to the deck for one last look before leaving, and I knew he was saying his private goodbyes to his childhood home. I was watching the scene I had pictured so many times in the trial runs…the pain of watching someone else bid their farewell.
As we got closer, I may have been going through the motions of efficiently packing and planning, but my emotions were threatening to overwhelm me, and so I slowly started shutting down. Any potential breach of the dam was met with a stern and audible “No!”, talking out loud to myself like a crazy person. There would be a time for release, but I could not afford to let it come too early. While it seemed to me that I was shutting off the emotions, to everyone else, all they could see was the tears. My husband begged me time and again to find a way to stop the crying. I was hell to be around. Outbursts of anger and impatience felt like the only possible reactions. I stomped around like a monster, claws out, breathing fire on anyone who might dare to offer sympathy, support, intimacy.
A couple of days before the final move, I had a dream. Marc was out of town on business, so it was up to me to finish the last of the packing, and do the final walk through of the house. To say I was feeling overwhelmed would be an understatement, and I was really struggling to hold it together. The dream was just a snippet, short but vivid, and I knew instantly upon waking that it was prophetic.
In the dream, I was on my deck, standing and looking at the hummingbird garden, which I had planted in a long planter box that stretched nearly the length of the house. Every detail was realistic and accurate; the late blooming hyssop in sunset colors, the miniature fuschias, the salvias, the fading red hot pokers. The remnants of the bird feeder stand that my husband had built for me many years ago, falling apart and covered with moss, stood sentry at one end of the planter. Though it was a warm, Indian summer type of afternoon, hanging from the bird feeder was an icicle, and inside, frozen and lifeless, was a hummingbird. It was hanging upside down, in the defeated pose of a duck hanging in a Chinese deli, its tiny feet and legs stretched upright, the wings tucked in tight. It was brilliantly colored, and the ice enhanced the opalescent sparkle of its feathers. I carefully plucked the icicle, and held it to my heart. The ice melted away, and I could feel the cold trickles running down inside my shirt. When I pulled it away, the hummingbird had come back to life, and it sat peacefully in the cup of my palms. We studied each other for a bit, while the warmth returned to its tiny body. Then it alighted, hovered briefly, and flew away. When I woke up, I knew in my heart that it was a message, telling me that my sadness would eventually end.
On the last day, there was only one item left that needed to be moved, my kayak. I knew that when I left the house for the last time, it needed to be by sea. A ceremonial journey away from one village, to start a new life in another village. My plan had been to paddle away the night before, but I couldn’t finish the last load in time, and I missed out on a warm evening and a beautiful sunset. Plans made, but outcome out of my control, as usual. The next morning, I walked through the house, opening every drawer and cabinet for the last time, looking out each window. I locked up, left the keys, and drove my car to a pullout point close to my new home, then took an Uber back to the house. It was a dreary, cold morning, and my farewell journey didn’t have the poetic feel I had imagined. I pushed off and paddled away, chilled and sad. I turned only once to look back.
It has not been lost on me that our move represented so many endings. When you are in the midst of child rearing, you cannot imagine a time when your children will not be the center of your universe, or that your children will stop considering you the center of theirs. And yet. Leaving that home was the end of an era for our family. One of my children has left home, in fact, he has left the hemisphere, and I still struggle with that loss. The other child is here in body, but his spirit already has one foot out the door. This eventful year coincided with the end of my childbearing years, and I didn’t even notice it until the end. The hormonal tidal wave had to have contributed to the stress and emotional flood, yet in my usual fashion, I dismissed it. For the first time, things had not gone our way, and we reeled from the shock that our good luck was not a given. Too many things had pulled at my time and stolen the hours I would have spent centering myself among the trees, on the mountaintops, or floating down rivers, and I felt resentful of that.
A couple of weeks after we moved, I found myself by chance at the Chinese Reconciliation Park on Ruston Way in Tacoma, a lovely little gem of a garden, overlooking the water. It was an unusually warm and sunny Fall day, and I had stopped there after a late start and aborted mission to watch Carter play in a school golf match. Rather than fight traffic and go home, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon stroll along the water. I realized that the pull of work and the bad traffic had not conspired against me to make me miss the match, but that the universe had conspired for me, and that all along, I was meant to be in that place, at that time, to walk the shore, to feel the sun, to smell the salt air and see the clear water. To stand on the hill next to the sculpture of a sundial, to strike a pose, to let the sun start melting the ice that was encasing my heart. My spirits soared like a warrior, and I felt empowered.
The other night, while lying in bed and bemoaning our insomnia, my husband began a line of questioning in which the central question was “Exactly how much longer will you be frozen?” You can extrapolate the context for yourself. I had told him previously about my hummingbird dream, and that I had felt frozen with grief and stress. That like the hummingbird inside the icicle, the slightest tap could crack me in half. Frozen, frigid, fractured. That it was going to take me some time to thaw out, that we needed to be patient with ourselves, and each other. When he asked me that, I wanted to punch him in the arm, and ask what he was doing to help his cause, and mine. I recognized that he, too, was struggling, in his own way. But the next morning, it hit me. There was no help to be had. It was up to me, and I could wait no longer. I needed to do the work. I needed to pull myself out of my funk, for my own sake, and to be there for my family. So, orders were issued from headquarters: Commence thawing now.
That same morning, a memory popped into my head. Marc and I were either not yet married, or newly married, I don’t remember which. We were living in California, and were flying home for the Christmas holiday. Being low on funds, but with a surplus of time on my hands, I had decided to present the women in my family with handmade gifts. I labored for months on decoupage treasure boxes. I had collected pictures and quotes, fitting for each recipient, glued them on the hand painted wooden boxes, lined them with velvet, and spread layer upon layer of shellac to seal them. I was so excited about the gifts. I wrapped them carefully and packed them in my suitcase. When we arrived, I opened my suitcase, and was dismayed to find that the plastic wrap around each box had adhered to the not-quite set shellac, and ruined them all. Heartbroken, and sure that no one over the age of six can get away with giving a flawed handmade gift, I threw them in the garbage. I wish now that I had kept them, even with their rumpled surfaces.
Many years ago, I attended a retreat. One of the activities was an evening bonfire, where we were instructed to let go of old habits, disappointments, and anything we felt might be holding us back from living our fullest life. We were encouraged to write a nagging issue on a slip of paper, and commend it unto the flames, the problem going up in smoke, once and for all. One of my many pieces of baggage was the grief over the death of my maternal grandmother, decades before. She had been the centerpiece of our family, and her loss caused a fracturing that has been felt ever since. At the bonfire that night, I vowed to let go of my grief, and to do my best to fill the hole she left. For my family, to be the rock, the light, the glue. I watched the slip of paper curl and burn, I saw the smoke rise up, but the grief remained firmly lodged in place. And most days, much as I try to muster the energy, I find myself mired in the glue, doggedly marching one foot in front of the other, trying to lead the way.
In a rental place that I have struggled to make look and feel like home in the two months we have lived here, the holidays have come storming in, predictable and on time. Marc had a full travel schedule, so in an attempt to set my inertia aside, I purchased a Christmas tree, brought it home, wrestled it into a stand, then hauled it into its place in the house. I wrenched my back pulling the boxes with holiday decorations from the various hiding places among the many still unpacked boxes in the garage. I decorated the tree, decorated the entry, placed strands of lights, hung the stockings. Notice was duly paid by others that all this activity had occurred, but each night when I am the last to arrive home, and find my family sitting in the room next to the dark Christmas tree, I am the one that turns on the lights. I wonder each time why I bothered with the tree, if no one else thinks to turn it on. But then I remember that it is my job. My job to tack up the holiday cheer. My job to light the lights, to plan the gifts, to fill the stockings. To uphold the traditions that can be upheld, no matter where we find ourselves. To create new traditions where gaps have appeared.
It will always be my job to hang the lights, to tend the garden, make the homemade soup. To build the tee-pee out of driftwood, coax the scarlet runner beans into covering it, and to invite little people into it to read stories and watch bugs. To put up the Christmas tree, and to take it all back down and pack it away. It may seem like it doesn’t matter to anyone else, but I have to believe that it does. That if I didn’t do it, or wasn’t here to make it happen, it would be missed. That I would be missed.
Maybe I am the treasure box, embellished with a collage of all the pictures of my life, the shell I present to the world. A carefully curated collection, arranged just so. Torn and cut to pleasing sizes, edges blurred and overlapped for effect. Covered with layer upon layer of shellac. A box that has cracks and a reluctant and rusty hinge, a latch that doesn’t quite line up anymore. The surface crackled and yellowed, and chipped down to the wood in some places. But a repository for good and special things, nevertheless. One could open such a box, and see nothing. I choose to see a space filled with light, with memories, with love. To be opened often, to shake out a memory to share, and say “Remember when…?”
Women are inherently the stronger ones. I am the woman. I am the wife, I am the mother. It is my job to alight, hover, and take joyful flight, on to the next chapter, whatever it may be, and to bring those I love along for the flight. After all, I saw the hummingbird, and it was me who plucked the icicle. It was the warmth of my heart that melted the ice. It was my hands that cradled the bird with wonder, holding it gently until it could fly, then lifting it up to the heavens to take flight. I did that.
I am the hummingbird, and I am the warmth, and I am the light. I am also the keeper of the box, the collector of the memories, the guardian of the traditions, the glue that binds my family, no matter where they scatter, the spark that blows life into our existence and insists that we find meaning in our days. I can lift myself up, I can be my own savior, and in doing that, I can lift and save everyone else.
I am the treasure.
Photo credits: Susan Berry, Marc Berry; Icicle picture modified from a photo borrowed from Pinterest, original photographer unknown
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