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148

and this is why i can't spend…spend…time writing.  because it Takes time.  it Takes time that i want to be stitching.  the writing…well….it is what it is but i need to leave that to others who love it.  who love it like i love making cloths.  so…aside from the writing, the reading about the writing, the thinking about what others wrote, this is what i have at the end of the day

 

IMG_6539g

how amazing.  the Young Mimosa is going to bloom.  the Mother Mimosa that was severely damaged but lived from the Winter a couple years ago has NO blooms.  She continues.  but no blooms.  this young one…YES!  which tells me i still know almost Nothing about the lives of the Plant People.  and as dusk comes so does a Storm…and it feels like a day just disappeared.

 

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29 responses to “148”

  1. Minka Avatar
    Minka

    Reminds me…decades ago, my mom nurses a little seed unto a mimosa tree that 10-20 years later, when she was recovering from two strokes, I brought her to the backyard for lunch or a snack and we sat under the mimosa tree and had. Little something to eat. Within weeks, we moved her to NYC, never to return again to her own home. All this came flooding back the moment I saw your photo.

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  2. grace Avatar
    grace

    so…here it is. such small things, really, but that set into motion so much. Isn’t it how it goes?
    that dappled light. singular.
    bringing memory.
    i am thinking. What GOOD is memory???? i don’t know.
    to LEARN?, What?

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  3. Michelle in NYC Avatar
    Michelle in NYC

    That mimosa…and the smell of it when it blooms with those little pink faerie flowers…ah…..that’s some of what memory is for. There’s an old one and a young one blooming every year around the corner on 19th street. Sometimes I walk there just for that because I remember what it smells like, how the light hits it, the subtlety of it’s coloring, and the feathery canopy it makes when it gits tall.

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  4. Susan C Avatar
    Susan C

    My mom’s mimosa – given to her by my grandma – bloomed for the first time this year too.
    Those leaves remind me of the trees in dinosaur books. Beautiful.

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  5. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Coming late to the writing, the chronology of your life, the years in New Mexico, it comes to me that if you do indeed go to California, it will be a going, a went, not a left because the polvo (dust) of this land, this place, Polvadera, New Mexico has become part of your DNA, is in your bloodstream…and I love you for the deep sharing that you have done with the writing, that you took the time to set the chronology,when all the while the cloth called but waited because it knows that life is made up of dust and words and goats and mimosas and compost and memories and the need at times to answer the most basic of questions, how did we get where we are…
    And someone mentioned the immigrant experience and I think of my Father and Mother coming here to America from Spain, truly leaving, knowing that they would never see their first home again but then, they carried it in their DNA, in their hearts that expanded to include a new place, edged with the memories of Spain…
    Went, leaving, just going takes courage and so we do what we must and the lessons and examples of those who came before, are the gifts of, at least for me, trail marks…because I took my Father’s words before he died, “go and see America” to heart. and for the past 11 years, along with my husband, just went…

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  6. patricia Avatar
    patricia

    interesting how mimosa can hold so many memories. i imagine oak/hickory/maple/ash/walnut/poplar do the same–but it’s different with mimosa. i grew up in the hardwoods. yet two trees down the road from us seemed so exotic they occupy a larger part of that memory pie. mimosa and catalpa. and of the two, mimosa has to be the most alluring. for years i thought the blooms were embryo hummingbirds. they’ve all bloomed here in NC. almost a month ago. but in a sense their smell lingers still. thanks for another chance to see them. hope you’ll post the blooms.

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  7. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes. a perfect example. you went.
    yes.

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  8. beth Avatar
    beth

    Enjoyed the story, Grace. It seems I always want to answer your questions with “both”. We moved a lot when I was a child. A lot. There is always a leaving and a going to. But which is more significant changes. Whether your main focus is backwards or forwards.

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  9. deb Avatar
    deb

    I love the way they look but I allowed one to get beyond the pretty stage and now it towers over the place where we park…the sap falls, the flowers fall and stick; even a hard rain won’t dislodge the mess and I HATE wasting water for washing my car so I drive around in ginko cammo…nasty.

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  10. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    Ah Mimosa & dripping Spanish moss, Houston… 1963…discovering how the leaves are sensitive to touch, have planted them in as many gardens as possible over the years… and about all that coming and going, I dream of living on a houseboat in the not too faraway & keep moving a little every day!

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  11. Nance Avatar
    Nance

    Yes marti is a great example too… Julie, first I must say that this idea of yours…” Women who left” is solid. There are many stories to be told if you should choose to pursue it. Now, woman who left vs. woman who went… The difference in my mind. I said I did not identify with a woman who left. Being one who went but…. There was one time that I did leave. I was in love and very young. I would have waited for this to develop further but there was an incident that I chose not to ignore and so I left my fathers house and my three younger sisters. It was intolerable to stay there for me so I did leave once. And that is the distinction… I left a situation that was no longer providing growth. I did not move forward purposely and solely to be with my husband. That would have been nice but it didn’t happen that way; my move was instigated by an intolerable situation. So I left it. Ever since then I was moving toward something chosen, some goal, some defined destination. I was not leaving a situation of “life equity” either… Something I had that was hard to leave. We moved often as I said before, and always to better ourselves by education or experience that was planned in advance. So that is the main distinction in my mind.
    So grace should you decide to move to California, would this be part of a joint dream I have heard you speak of in the past? One place that all the family could be together… At least in striking distance? I remember you searching for a place that would work for everyone. If so then I my mind you would be “wenting” not leaving. It is obvious how much you love this place, how much you you have invested. Why would you leave unless it was for something you want more? Your original move from Ann Arbor was truly leaving in my mind. You had to go for your sanity. For your growth as a human being. For your dreams. You had built up “life equity” there. It was really all you knew up until then. But it seems it all closed in on you and you needed to leave for your souls sake. So you became a woman who left. And you had to keep leaving until you found what would nurture your blessed lizard soul! You learned a lot along the way. We all have questions of the past… Did we do the right thing? We can’t really know unless we become a person of value. A person who lives up to our own specified goals. Some might say enlightened. If we get to that level of achievement then and only then do we know for sure.

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  12. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i have never seen one TALL. the mother tree here was
    about to get tall by desert standards, when that Very
    Hard Winter came and now, she is really just a bush.
    and She, as well as other counterparts here made me
    understand that in a desert place, maybe bush is better.
    maybe has more of a chance than Tree. so…i let her
    individuate her self into several. but the young one…
    bush from the beginning, is going to bloom

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  13. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    camo. nice. and i say, Oh Weeelllll

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  14. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    they are somehow Primitive trees, aren’t they? their
    opening and closing with the Light…the Dr. Seuss blooms

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  15. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    yes. This. yes.
    leaving
    went
    it’s falling into place.
    THANK YOU SO MUCH. yes….

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  16. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i’d never seen one before coming here. it’s Oak for me.
    but we don’t have oak. this mother tree was a gift from
    a Michigan friend who visited

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  17. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    but What if there is really no focus at all? what if it’s
    just the doing of it????

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  18. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    a HOUSEBOAT!!!! drifting, water lapping
    a HOUSEBOAT!
    maybe my Raft……………………….

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  19. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    a dreaming space

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  20. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    re your question here… “What Good is memory????”
    “You think when you wake up in the morning yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothing else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I don’t know what all. Start over. And then one morning you wake up and look at the ceiling and guess who’s laying there?”
    – Cormac McCarthy
    No Country for Old Men
    I am going to have to read this man’s books…
    oh and I am reading The Woman Upstairs right now…

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  21. grace Avatar
    grace

    it’s a wonderful quote, yes, maybe tho what i might mean
    more is the act of Remembering, spending time remembering?
    i like that my memory is there in those still images that
    are representative of a whole period of time, i like that.
    but spending time remembering…i still don’t know. i
    kind of just like the Slide Show….click…click…click.

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  22. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    that’s why we write to tell the stories to remember the details… & you know with your work with the old people that when the memories go there is not a real lot left to do…

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  23. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    this reminded me of our Dragonglass friend Eric who had a broken down truck in his backyard here in the big city years ago, he would go out there at night to sit in the truck behind the steering wheel, turn the radio & go with the dreams til dawn.

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  24. grace Avatar
    grace

    oh, DEAR you….we can go round in a circle about this
    it’s the Continuing of Doing that holds my attention.
    and once we can no longer do, and yes, once we can no
    longer remember, it’s time to go.

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  25. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    and when it’s time to die I want to go out into the desert and lay under the stars and slow my breath and heart down until they stop with intent…

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  26. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    that would be beauty Full.
    but i also know that death does what it wants. How it
    wants.

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  27. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    Love to this man

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  28. mimmin Avatar
    mimmin

    oak for me too Grace! i made shutters for my son’s window when he was abot seven and they had oak leaves cut out of them.

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  29. grace Avatar
    grace

    oak. oak so much of Mother for me. always. Oak. Oak.

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