Denim blues

A June that feels like September. A brisk catch in the air, a slow catch in my throat.

I remember an old denim jacket that still hangs in the back of my closet, an atypical wedding gift from a  college friend who told me not to lose sight of who I was as I embarked on the "marriage thing."

I was 19. Her unconventional gift said "Screw the mixing bowls, tea towels, and whisks of domesticity! Hang on to your flannel shirt-loving, boot-wearing, independent self."

I wore that jacket while climbing mountains on my honeymoon and navigating the highs and lows of my 20s, covering it with a multitude of funky pins and buttons with slogans that hinted at who I was and where I'd been.

Those pins held my self together.

Decades later, I feel stripped bare by the passage of time, responsibilities and experience, love and loss, the unsteady flow of people in and out of my life, the realities of my age and my Age.

I feel a chill and a shiver on this June morning.

It feels like fall.

Today the plain denim jacket I own is several sizes larger than the vintage one in my closet, a harsh reminder of what the years have given and what they've taken away.

I pull it on and see myself in its threads:

Faded.

Weathered.

Soft.

Blue.

Enduring.

Wednesday in December

I woke to rain on the roof and was happy.

Air cleansed, earth awakened, trees fed root deep in winter sleep.

The fish on the bottom of the cold pond barely stir but their thick, stiff bodies remember the swagger of spring, the power of their tails, the urge to leap high and hard against the waterfall.

I remember too.

I lie as I did before birth in the space rocked by the rise and fall of breath, the ebb and flow of  heartbeat and love.

In the dark.

Still me.

Family trees

-Copyright 2012 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. Do not cut, copy, paste, or steal.

 

All day and all night, my house is showered with acorns, clattering on the roof, bouncing and rolling on the deck, landing with a quiet thump on a chair. I look up at the early fall trees and think how they look triumphant, weary, and spent, just as I did when I delivered my two September babies years ago.

 

My brother in New York sends a request by e-mail: Would I mail him some acorns?

He of the Hundred Acre Woods has no oaks, and I, his tree-loving sister, understand that this is a sad thing indeed. 

    Copyright 2012 Veronica McCabe Deschambault.So I step out into the day and the bounty of my life in the shadow of towering oaks. Bending at the waist with a sack in my hand, I think of my brother who has quietly stood beside me and for me, all my life, in every season.

 

Each acorn I gather in my hand will soon rest in his. What has come from my land and my life will be planted in his.

 

 

 

Tomorrow I will carry a box to the post office heavy with acorns. When the postmistress asks if there is anything fragile or perishable inside, I'll say no with a secret smile because the opposite is true.

 

Inside that box is my strength, my bounty, my hope, my love, my gifts.

 

I'll find joy in the receipt she presses into my hand: a reminder of all that is freely given and received,

planted, grown, and shared, from generation to generation.

 

 Copyright 2012 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. Do not cut, copy, paste, steal.

--for Steve

Holding onto the light

I button up a soft flannel shirt and pull on my boots. I slip on a deep orange spessartite ring, a red coral bead necklace, and slide a buttery leather handbag onto my shoulder.

I open the sun roof to blue skies and yellow leaves, the scent of woodsmoke and a soft breeze.

Joy sweeps in.

I'm astounded there isn't a line at the post office. I carefully select a bounty of stamps: Latin singers, Gregory Peck, Merchant Marine ships, Love stamps, and images of Owney the Postal Dog.

I'm excited. I tell my teenage son, "Check out these great stamps! Aren't they the best?"

He looks at me, smiles, mock rolls his eyes, and says, "God, I don't ever want to get old."

Sometimes I don't want to "get old" either, but I remain unashamed over my love affair with these stamps, each a miniature work of art.

After so many years on the planet, I know it's the little things that make and break a moment, a day, a life.

I see the world my own way.

I point the camera at a glorious scene of autumn foliage and then bite my lip when it's downloaded and appears on my monitor with a washed out sky, leaves more brown than golden. All of the sparkle is missing, the enchanting dance of light and shadow lost in glare.

I feel the same way when I look in the mirror. The objective reflection it offers is not someone I recognize.

How can I preserve what I see when the world is handing me what feels like a pale imitation?

I choose my reality. I create it.

I delete the faded picture, close my eyes for a moment, and saturate the colors in memory.

I turn away from the view in the mirror, the softening jaw, the gray in my hair, and walk back into my life, the heels of my Stetson boots underlining my determination not to fade away. 

She can't explain

She can't explain it. Why tea tastes different when it's not in the right mug. Why she has some warm and nostalgic association with the smell of tobacco smoke even though no one she's loved or lived with has ever been a smoker. How a walk in the woods can unknot and unleash every hard thing in her. How it can make her feel completely at peace or bring her to tears. Why she never has a handkerchief when she needs one.

She can't explain why she loves dying leaves and wet pavement. How a lemon-tinged sunset in a pearl  winter sky reminds her of turning 12. How she got to be so round when she used to be so lanky. Why it doesn't bother her anymore.

She can't explain why she reads her horoscope when it never rings true. Why she owns a deck of fortune cards. Why she woke up one Sunday and realized she'd never go to church again.

She can't explain what she hopes to find when she checks her e-mail. What she is looking for on social networks. The way she can be so loquacious one day and so reserved the next. How she'd rather live without a phone than live without her camera. Why it's so easy to cut some things loose without regret or debate and so hard to let others go.