Today at dawn, high cumulus overlay the sky and the wind blew brisk. From the north dormer window a gap in the clouds showed sunrise pink. The northwest wind blowing during the cooling night had swept the humid miasma of the last week's ninety-degree days away to the ocean. The wind flowing through my bedroom was fresh to the taste and the smell. Welcome, cool wind. Sleeping was well.
I have been waiting for this, through days of shifting window shades to keep the sun from heating the rooms, closing windows in the morning as soon as the air felt the slightest bit too warm and opening them at sundown. Two large fans stood at windows on each floor to blow out and draw the cooling air in through other windows. It was the only way to make sleeping upstairs tolerable.
The robin that nests in the shed sang the morning alight. From the field came the tumbling notes of a bobolink, further, the faint pump of a bittern, and a nearby brown thrasher with its repeats of song. (I saw it later on the other side of the hill.)
Today my grandchildren's 90-year-old great-grandmother was buried. By 11 a.m., the time of her funeral mass, the thick clouds had blown away and sunshine, with a breeze that retained its coolness, created a day to exult in. It was summer's lushness and beauty at its finest. Truly, her soul had a splendid send-off.
Great-Belle (as she was called by my son-in-law's family) had been well and active until about a year ago. In the fall, she had a stroke which left her with little swallowing capacity and unintelligible speech but she was very definitely cognizant. Her son and daughter and their families have suffered, during this past eight months, their own quandary about removing the stomach tube which kept her alive. Recently her body said enough in an unmistakable way, and she was released from that tether, and finally from all tethers.
I have read about folks, particularly folks of Native American heritage, who choose to release their spirits when the time is right. It is not a matter of "taking" their own life, but a matter of letting it go. Such ability would be a desirable characteristic, I think.
The day continued in beauty as I played with my granddaughter and grandson with a giant bubble-wand in their backyard. Later at my home, as I thought about writing this column, I decided to weed the flowerbed that ran in front of the weathered porch. The day was too beautiful to sit before a computer screen. The garden's bleeding hearts were down to a few last blossoms, the monkshood buds were opening up, and my sister and I needed to find the morning glories that we had planted a month ago.
The bleeding hearts had grown voraciously but we were surprised to find that the morning glories that had had to climb their strings through the big plants were doing the best. Those big plants got trimmed so that the pansies that had been struggling beneath the long leggy stems could get sun and room. A whole row of yellow and purple pansies suddenly showed passers-by their bright faces.
Next we attacked a good chunk of herbage that grew in front of the stone wall, where gladiola blades now reached two feet tall despite the many stems of the unknown specie. Finally, the plastic sled was heaped with green stems and leaves, and I pulled it across the driveway to the tall grass beside the barn and dumped it. My wrists had had enough of pulling weeds.
The day passed into evening, the sky blushed with pale amber and the air chilled. In the dusk, I walked up the dirt road so luxuriantly roofed with leaves, breathing deep the air that was full of the scent of greening, underlain by the scent of rich earth. I turned onto the woods path and climbed through the black raspberries, the tall ferns, the pines, to the place where it turned down into the vale. The melody of two hermit thrushes had been with me from the halfway up the road, growing closer as I neared that point. Dusk became deeper as I listened…and listened.
I cannot describe their music except that, for me, who loves to sing, it does so "rinse and ring" into every cell of me, as no other song can. My heart was filled with the music, the air, the compleat beauty of this day.
In this dark of the moon, the clear night sky bloomed with so many stars, so many stars, and I give thanks to be in this place on this earth.