Cicadas and the hum of life

In Virginia, we are being visited by the 17-year cicadas, which have been living underground and slowly maturing since hatching in 1996. They're surfacing now to mate aboveground, and their time in the sunlight will be brief. The females will lay eggs in the trees and when the eggs hatch, the nymphs will descend the tree and burrow into the ground where they'll live until they're ready to mate--in 2030.

***

Spring 1996. I emerged from a long, snowy winter marked by sleep deprivation and the unrelenting cries of a colicky baby. My son has finally begun sleeping through the night, he's learned to crawl, and I've returned to working part-time for a public relations firm.

I don't remember noticing the cicadas that year, but I can still visualize my son scrambling across the kitchen floor with our two old dogs, racing to the back door to greet daddy, home from work.

***

May 2013. The cicadas are everywhere. Hanging on windows, door frames, and leaves. Spastically flying. Shedding their waxy shells. Buzzing and calling and looking for mates, their bulging red eyes looking desperate and alien, their exoskeletons littering the woods, the driveway, the street.

My son is now 17. Last Friday he shaved the dense forest of his auburn beard and had his long blonde hair buzzed high and tight, shedding the exoskeleton of his teenage years on the salon floor and allowing the man inside to fully emerge.

He loves military history and math and wants to study engineering. He knows how to break down and rebuild car engines, just like his dad. In the last few years, they have backpacked well over a hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail and driven all over pursuing eBay and Craig's List leads on cars, parts, and motorcycles.

I sit in the garden with my retired ovaries and a daughter in full bloom and think about what I need to shed to fully mature. What will be left when the world I've known for 17 years ends?

***

My dog, my constant companion, is obsessed with cicadas. On our daily walks, he pulls me from carcass to carcass, devouring them with obvious delight. He can't believe his good fortune! His life is perfect! He greets every day with enthusiasm.

He doesn't know the cicadas will soon be gone, and when they return in 17 years, he will be gone too. I shiver at the thought.

***

2030. Will the words I'm writing here still exist? Will I be strong enough to walk for miles among the cicadas? Will I have a leash in my hand and a dog bowl on the kitchen floor? A husband in my bed? A son and a daughter in full bloom? Photos of grandbabies tacked to the refrigerator? 

I consider those questions as I sit next to our garden pond and witness a gigantic frog hop up and snap a cicada into its mouth. Just. Like. That.

The koi glide to the surface and pull the cicadas under when they flail in the water.

The cats pounce on them in the shadow of the azaleas.

Cars crush them.

People smash them and sweep them away with brooms.

Despite the carnage, a chorus of cicada survivors send out a cacophony of calls, looking for mates: they don't want to die alone.

They are unrelenting in their desire to fully complete their lifecycle, humming with anticipation and desire.

The rise and fall of their whirring determination, the brevity of their time in the sun, the uncertainty saturating every moment of every day is their music. Their song.

Life is short, and they refuse to stop singing until it's over.

(Post and images copyright 2013 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. Do not copy, paste, or steal.)

Dabbling in my studio

I have an interesting art project on my radar that I will share more about once I figure out exactly how I want to express the ideas I have for it. While I'm waiting for those ideas to gel, I've been dabbling with paper, paint, ink, and pencils, trying to exercise my flabby art muscles.

First, a birthday card for a friend who is an avid fisherman. I wanted something masculine but with a touch of humor. I love juxtaposing the serious, realistic fish with the silly birthday hat. I chose papers that suggested boulders, water, and the outdoors and tried to avoid a static composition. Bonus: Toward the end of the project, I noticed that the the letter "y" in the happy birthday greeting is shaped like a fish hook.

This second card, done in watercolor paints, is simply an exploration of color and a tribute to wide open spaces. Desert. Beach. Sky. 

Finally, I love topographic maps and the idea of "life maps." I took a piece of a map of a beautiful area I once lived in and began drawing on it with no particular plan in mind. The result is both universal and personal and the style reminds me of this project I did a few years ago.

 

 I'd like to get back into art journaling or painting. I feel rusty and out of shape creatively. Time to take a break from cards and freestyle more with my art supplies. I'm a big believer in learning by doing, and I haven't been doing enough in my studio for too long. Stay tuned. We'll see where it takes me. 

Turning point

Late Friday afternoon, I finally felt myself exhale and release the tension of the last few weeks. In the office, we'd gotten through our first week using a new software system designed to consolidate all our patient records, charges, insurance information, and business data and reports. At home, my daughter returned to school for the first time since getting a concussion in a soccer game more than two weeks ago. At first she could only manage a few hours at school, but by the week's end she was able to do a whole day. Thursday we had a good meeting with a guy who would like to rent our old house from us, and I was glad to get that behind us and have a new tenant lined up.

Friday night we hosted dinner with old friends visiting from Oklahoma (who endured a three-hour, D.C. commuter traffic jam to come see us). Lots of laughter and thoughtful discussion on politics and healthcare peppered with a few anecdotes from way back when.

Saturday morning found us back at our old house, evaluating what needs to be done before the current tenants leave and the new ones take over the lease.

This sunny Cape Cod with its oversized windows, French doors, hardwood floors, and cozy dormer windowseats holds only happy memories for me. It was our home for 15 years and saw us go from a couple to a family of three and finally a family of four.

I remember taking Sunday afternoon naps in puddles of sunlight in the living room and being entranced by the moonlight streaming down from a second floor clerestory window onto the staircase at night. Our two dogs, Jenny and Shelley, used to shoulder each other in a race out the backdoor into the yard and yip and bark as they treed squirrels.

I remember the clutter of a kitchen crowded with baby bouncers and high chairs. My feet trace the circuit we'd walk with crying infants on our shoulders. I remember how much I loved the view of sky and branches from the glider rocker in the nursery upstairs. I can still hear the bump-scoot-bump sound of my two-year-old daughter descending the steps one at a time on her diapered bottom.

There were backyard birthday parties, the piñata hung from the oak tree and the picnic table and deck decorated. The swing set is gone now, but I can see the kids pumping high or racing caterpillars down the slide. Sidewalk chalk and waterguns and sandboxes and baby doll tea parties and wading pools and sprinklers and Tonka trucks and shovels and buckets and all the joys of summer live on there.

I see a younger version of my husband, planting irises and daylilies and butterfly bushes and peonies and azaleas. The trees that were saplings 25 years ago are gigantic now. The garden shed he built is a bit shabby, but I remember when our little boy helped his dad hammer nails into the siding and climbed a ladder up to its roof. Every year on their birthdays, I'd photograph my children in front of the garden gate, marking their growth that way.

Over the last eight years, that house has been home to several sets of tenants and is poised to welcome a new family. I'm hoping they make their own happy memories there, and I'm also relieved to be halfway through the process of saying goodbye to one set of tenants while getting the house ready for the next set. Even when things go smoothly, it's still a lot to manage, but we're getting there.

 Today, Mother's Day, we celebrated with a picnic in a meadow full of buttercups... 

  ...and a 4-mile hike through the forest. 

It was perfect weather, perfect company, a perfect day.

So good, in fact, that I don't even mind that tomorrow is Monday.

Did you have a good weekend? 

How am I feeling? Like this--

How are you feeling? Tell me using metaphor or link to a photo.

Rainy day ramblings on fear, anxiety, marriage, and the rest

 Copyright 2013 Veronica McCabe Deschambault

It's the type of spring day that sends me reaching for an oversized gray sweatshirt and a cup of English breakfast tea. The steady rain on the roof softly drums affirmations and intentions into the day:

be gentle

     be strong

          be kind

               be patient

                    be grateful

I want to be all these things, but today I must also "be productive." Last week was devoured by work and doctors' appointments related to my daughter's concussion. A weekend trip to a family wedding was a welcome break from all the stress of April. I came home Sunday night, tried to catch up on laundry, and went into work early yesterday morning, the day we launched a new medical office software program that integrates scheduling, patient information, chart notes and medical records, charges, billing, bookkeeping, and insurance.

I came home from work and after dinner, sat at the table with my husband to evaluate an application from someone who wants to rent our old house. We approach the topic from opposite directions, with him focusing on all that could potentially go wrong and me on the likelihood that everything will be just fine. When it comes to people, we filter our opinions and experiences so differently. He maximizes risks related to strangers while I minimize them. In theory, we should balance each other out and meet in the middle. In theory. 

I am perplexed how he can travel into war zones and work with explosives and not fear for his safety but moves through our middle class neighborhood and small town with the assumption that at any minute, someone could steal our cars or come through an unlocked door in our house and kill us one by one. He can be borderline obsessive about home security, keys, passwords. Sure, I lock doors and use the home alarm, but I don't live in fear at home. If I discover an unlocked door, I don't immediately frame that as a "near miss."

However, whenever I'm a passenger in a car on I-95 in heavy traffic or in the center of a big city with street parking, bicycles, and pedestrians, I'm tense and nervous. I often have to close my eyes or sit in the back seat to keep my stomach from churning, afraid we'll collide with a car or a person. True, I've been in five accidents (none of them my fault) but most of them were minor. I have a hard time trusting other drivers or relaxing when someone else is driving in certain settings.

My husband tries to be understanding of my car anxiety and I try to understand his fear of strangers and crime.

"Be kind. Be patient. Be strong. Be grateful."

Life mantra. Marriage mantra.

And now it's time for me to "be productive."