The little things

Springtime in the eastern Ohio woods

As spring finally seems to have really and truly arrived here in the eastern Ohio woods, I’m realizing how much it’s the little things that make the day, the week, the month. Weddings, job interviews, press conferences, coronations (well, I guess it depends on what kind of social circles you travel in) . . . these are some biggies, but they can make your brain freeze up and so despite their hugeness on the life scale, they’re actually sometimes kinda hard to remember. So it’s the little things that are reliable markers.

I was remembering recently a time a few years back I was making candy (I’ve made candies from scratch for decades). No big news there. But! That afternoon I had my first stove fire whilst making said candy! And I learned with some immediacy that I am shockingly inept during a fire. I had left for but a moment and walked back into the kitchen to see two-foot flames leaping above my pot of boiling sugar. I am a generally competent adult, but right then, I froze. I unfroze after a few seconds and shrieked for help, at which point my son Slim arrived out of nowhere and I ran into the pantry to get the fire extinguisher. Which I then handled helplessly from all angles, trying to figure it out, not realizing you have to pull a pin (like a grenade! How did I not know this?) before you can pull the trigger. So I tossed it to Slim, who ably pulled the pin and shot the fire out with quite a quantity of powdery white stuff, which then took me fully three days to clean up.

The pot and candy were unrescuable, but no one died and what a relief it was to have the privilege to clean up after a small localized fire, rather than have to pick through the ashes of my former house, all the while weeping over lost artwork and furniture. Yer darn tootin’ I know how lucky I am.

Around the same time as that fire, someone I loved trusted me enough, and needed me enough, to let me take her to the hospital for x-rays, to the doctor for a follow-up appointment and to make her soup and bread. She was sick as a dog, and she needed help. I can’t think of any higher privilege than helping someone who needs it. What better use is there of anyone’s time and energy than giving exactly what’s needed when and where it’s needed? She was glad to have me with her and I was glad to be able to be there.

Late spring is writing its name now all over the woods, in the tentative green budding at the tips of branches and in the dame’s rocket and bluet clusters that are brightening the ground. Canoers and kayakers are zipping down the creek, especially on weekends.

In springtime here in the woods, nothing makes me more aware of the vastness of the earth than to be very, very localized and see how much there is to see in one tiny spot. I try, at least once or twice a year during warm weather to lie right down on the ground and be tuned into the fact that I’m on the earth itself, me next to it, tiny life clinging to gigantic sphere, with nothing between us other than clothing and grass.

The sensation is both enlarging and humbling. It simultaneously makes me feel insignificant and tightly woven into the universal scheme of things. It cures almost all ills, in my experience. I’m not doing a very good job explaining it, but Anne Frank can, and did, when she wrote, “The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens [and] nature . . . Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.”

I decided recently that I need to get back into swimming a coupla times a week. I love to swim. I am one of those people who, in childhood, didn’t come out until my parents practically pried me from the water, fingers and toes blue and pruney. I’m a strong swimmer, and although I’m not particularly fast, I have endurance and can go til the cows (or the dolphins) come home. I usually swim half a mile (36 laps) in 22 to 23 minutes. My goal is to break 21 minutes. Back in my 40s, one magical day, I swam half a mile in 20 minutes exactly. I rode that high for a week or longer. I have no idea if this is do-able now, or even advisable for an elderly person such as myself. I don’t care. It’s a goal. I’m not losing sleep over it, but I will be tickled pink if I can do it again one of these days.

Swimming empties my head of everything superfluous and troubling. Back and forth between the pool walls, I am going nowhere except towards serenity and calm. The weight of the world slides off my shoulders and I get out feeling both strong and light. And when I come home to shower, there is often something astonishing to see in the very early morning — such as the pale, pale blue cloud that settled into my valley just this morning, arrowed through with pink light from the rising sun.

None of this amounts to anything much. It’s no big deal — just the fine print of day-in-and-day-out life. But it’s all mine, and it all delights me.

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