A Life's Work

places are nothing without you

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“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

—Mary Oliver

“Let me be Bethushka,” I plead to the trees as I’m dragged across the dark forest of dreams into the hazy consciousness of a new morning. The yawning sun is pouring through the windows. Max is barking eagerly at the flurry of wings dashing and darting from the ground up into the treetops while my daughter pulls at my eyelids. “Open!” she demands. Wide eyed and ready to start her day but not without me.

Spring has finally dragged herself out of bed alongside me. I crack open the door and take in the fragrant smell of blossoms unfurling. An assortment of peaches, plums and pears. The trees lift their branches up and then back down again, ever so slightly, stretching against the wind. 

I try to listen closely to the chatter of the birds. Decipher who is singing which tune and when. As I lean my ear towards the sky, I am swimming through currents of shame. It has taken me thirty-one years to understand the importance of learning the songs that have steadily filled each day, each new season of my life since birth. 

I gather a collection of my family’s hair woven between the teeth of our brush before placing it on a small patch of moss nestled under the hickory tree that lives outside our window. An offering to the flying kin who refused to leave me in silence despite how long it took me to raise my gaze from the ground and up towards them. It’s not long before the black-capped chickadee glides down, quickly swooping up the strands of hair with her beak before returning to her handmade nest built of foraged treasures. 

I take a tiny kraft envelope out. Write as legibly as I can: places are nothing without you. Then stuff it with aster, bee balm and goldenrod. 

“More book?” my daughter asks. Shoving the soft, purple copy of Miss Rumphius into one hand while grabbing the other and leading me to the yellow rocking chair. A place that has held years of entangled limbs, varied emotions and words patchworked into stories shared just between us. 

“Let’s be like the Lupine Lady.” I tell her before closing the book. I stuff our pockets full of wildflower seeds. “We’ll pollinate a wildland of love notes across the valley.” I place a hat atop her head, tying the straps tightly under her chin before lathering her pale skin with lotion to protect her delicate face from the splotchy, painful kisses left from the rays of our favorite burning star. 

“Ella help garden! Mama help garden!” she says as we walk hand in hand toward her father who is preparing the beds in between the apple trees and currants. On our way to the gate we pass fields of purple violets. Excitedly she lays her belly in the grass and faces the elegant flower whose small presence brings so much joy to spring. “Boop!” she giggles as she gently touches the purple petals with her forefinger before jumping to her feet and exclaiming, “Daffodil! It nice!” The patch of yellow narcissus lift their buttery trumpets her way, singing a chorus of gratitude. 

Spotting a baby turtle, we plant our knees back down into the dirt in order to give a proper hello. The tiny creature immediately retreats into their shell but returns when they hear my toddler’s voice. Slowly pushing their face out to look her way. “‘Mourning Dove!” she points out. Quickly turning her head up in response to the bird singing above us. In the moments that our gaze leaves the ground, towards the sky and back again, our tiny friend has already disappeared somewhere deep into the world of grass.

“Love you, oak tree.” she sings out, tenderly placing her small hand on each sight of lichen covered bark we pass. Stopping often to ask, “Mama what?” when she comes across a flower she doesn’t yet know the name of. Repeating each syllable of my response carefully until we reach the stream. Leaning against a fallen tree, I watch as she intently picks up each stone before playfully tossing it to our dog eagerly waiting at the edge of the water.

“Teach the children,” Mary Oliver instructs readers in her essay Upstream. “Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.”

As I grow alongside my daughter, I cannot help but think that she is the one who is teaching me. Reminding me that this world is filled with so much magic and wonder.

With her birth came an old way of living. A community I once had belonged to. Lost to the language I had forgotten to speak. Hand in hand, she is the one who is returning us home.