by Sara Barry | Jul 30, 2014 | canning, garden, summer, writing
It’s the time of year when fruit flies are destined to take over the universe—or at least your kitchen. It’s the time of year when you keep cooking and canning and freezing trying to stay ahead of those fruit flies. It’s the time of year when your compost bucket fills up every day, more than once.
It’s the time of year when long green veggies pile up in your kitchen. You Google “zucchini recipes” and that poem by Marge Piercy. You’re not handing them out to anybody who walks by. Not quite yet.
It’s the time of year when peach juice drips down your chin and blueberries stain your fingers purple. Your arms are crisscrossed with scratches from raspberry brambles, but you don’t care.
It’s the time of year when lawn mowers rumble through dinner time and the evening insects are quieter as darkness settles. It’s the time of year when you should be cursing the heat and humidity, but tonight it feels like fall. Not yet. Not yet.
It’s the time of year when you want to sit outside and do nothing, but the garden calls and the squash and the beans and the cucumbers on the counter call. It’s the time of year when you stir pots in steamy kitchens (and love it) and wait for that tiny ping that makes you smile each time.
It’s the time of year when years ago you were waiting for your baby’s surgery, waiting to start the life you expected (almost), and you wonder now if that old anxiety is in you still. You know it’s there still in December, but in July, when you were scared but still hopeful? You don’t know. So you do what you did that year. You chop the summer fruit and cook it down and put it in jars. You did it that year because you needed something “normal” to hold on to. You do it now because it’s that time of year.
Your Turn
Write with Me:
It’s the time of year when . . . How does that sentence end for you? What are the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of this time of year? What’s happening in this season, in your life right now? Let it be loose and rough, but keep writing and see what comes up.
Share It:
Share your writing in the comments, add a link to your blog where you write about this time of year, or email me at sarabarrywrites@gmail.com. I’d love to hear this time of year is like for you.
Ready to keep writing? Try Summer Stories in 5 Minutes.
by Sara Barry | Jul 23, 2014 | grief, parenting, summer, writing
I used Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” as inspiration today. The last lines alone would make a good starting point:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
But, my mind caught on some of her other words, and I wrote this:
Do I know how to pay attention any more? Yesterday, I stopped, hands poised over keyboard, falling into relax, when a whirring caught my eye. A humming bird hovered and darted among my neighbors red bee balm. I could have glanced up, kept writing, kept filling the page, checking things off my list. But I sat. I watched. It’s good to look up sometimes, or down at the ants trundling through the grass, carrying crumb nearly bigger than they are. One of the activities K added to our list of things to do when bored was watch birds up in the sky. I should sit and do this with her sometimes. I should slow down on our walks, really notice, but so often I am trying to get somewhere or get some exercise or I need to be back by a certain time. What I wanted most from this summer was the laziness, the time to fall down in the grass, to pay attention.
“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” We are in a season of life and growth. I went out this morning, barefoot, to check on the garden. My feet swept through the dewy grass, so wet I could have had a long drink. I need to pull the peas. For even in this time of growing, they are done. The cosmos are almost taller than me and starting to flower. The sunflowers tower over me. The zinnias are just starting to reveal their brilliant pinks and oranges. Ah, the chard I thought wasn’t going to grow is taking off. I need to pick turnips again. I flick a few tiny seedlike eggs off the bottom of a squash leaf (squash bugs, something that doesn’t die too soon). Zucchini to pick later perhaps. Is the lettuce bin full in the fridge or should I pick some more? It too will soon be done. I should plant more.
We plant seeds knowing plants will eventually die, some after just one season. Even things we expect to live long don’t always. A neighbor gave us a peach tree for a wedding gift. Three years later as we were floundering together through grief, struggling each day to communicate with each other, tongues and brains numbed with sadness, both lost in our own dark worlds, the tree began to fail. The leaves yellowed and began to fall in the summer. I was too tired for a while to figure out what was wrong with it. Every day, I looked at our wedding tree and told myself it was not symbolic. I finally found the hole by the base of the tree where something had burrowed in, turning the trunk to mush. We scraped it out and hoped. The tree died. Six years later, we are still here. It was not symbolic. It was a just tree, dying too soon. That little boy of mine did that too.
His death, so many people would tell you, was supposed to help get my priorities straight, help me figure out just what to do with my wild, precious life, but I’m stuck like most of us in the mundane most days—folding laundry, making lunch, paying bills, getting to swimming lessons on time. I try to stop and notice, to really pay attention to the vivid faces of the zinnias in my garden and the fresh green smell of the cilantro I accidentally pull with the weeds. I try to really focus on K’s earnest face as she tells me about the fairies who came to her fairy house. I brush a wisp of blond hair away from her eyes, feel the excitement trembling through her. The moss is soft and damp underneath me as we sit in the green shade. K squats low, showing me how to make the house more inviting, more private so fairies will like them. Part of me zooms in on her small fingers poking, pointing, but part of me is poised to do, not the important things of this life, but the weeding and the work that keeps telling me it needs to get done, calling louder than the fairies or the birds or the rest of this summer day.
Your Turn
Write with Me:
Read Oliver’s poem or choose another poem to inspire you. Then start writing. Maybe you’ll mirror the subject or the theme of the poem, or maybe a particular word or phrase will evoke a memor or spark an idea. Take 15 minutes or so and just keep writing see where the poem takes you.
Share It:
Share your writing in the comments or email me at sarabarrywrites@gmail.com. I’d love to hear what you came up with.
Want another quick writing activity? Download Summer Stories in Five Minutes.
