noticing flowers... and other things

When we were in Italy for the year, everything was novel: walking around our walled city of Viterbo; getting a coffee; taking a walk along the Via Francigena; going to a lake; making friends.  We have been home for a year, and so much has happened in the past year -- we returned on July 1, 2019, and it is now June 14, 2020, so, yes, a year -- and yet, I have felt stymied about what to write, thinking that I had nothing to write since we were back to normal life, life as everyone knows it.  I did not have the adventure of a new place and new people, nothing that anyone would want to hear.  But, really, if I were to look at back at my 100+ entries from that Italy year, I would see that most entries were about ordinary things -- students, classes, walking our kids to school, moments on ordinary days, patterns that came up, good days, bad days, learning to speak up, decreasing confidence, increasing confidence, beauty, connection.

Back here in Waltham, Massachusetts, I will see, if I use those topics as guiding topics, that so much has happened in the last year to notice, to write.  My Italy blog wasn't about my awe in seeing St. Peter's or Caravaggios or Venice; it was about the simple, the ordinary, the daily.    And the more I wrote, the more I noticed.  The more there was to write about.

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One summer I lived in Alaska for graduate school.  I thought that I would love that the sun does not entirely go down, that it stays light all day; I didn't -- I missed the cover of dark to rest naturally and not feel that I should keep going.  I thought that I could never learn flowers, that flowers were flowers; but then I learned a few flowers that a friend mentioned before I went -- Indian paint brush and forget-me-nots and fireweed and lupine.  As I learned Indian paint brush, I started to notice what was beside it.  As I learned the flower beside it, I noticed another.  Eventually, I knew five different flowers.  By knowing one flower and then two and then three, I started to see more.

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While I did yoga in the living room a few mornings ago, Hannah, age 8, did her homework that was due at 10am.  She said, "I need a flower!"  She ran outside and came back with something pink.  When her dad helped her, he asked her, "Where'd you get the flower?"  She pointed out the window.  "Okay," he said.  "You've got a rhododendron."

My mom liked rhododendrons.  I like them, too.  We have a rhododendron bush -- bushes? -- in our yard.  It is difficult for me to learn flowers, in the same way it is difficult for me to learn trees and people's faces.  If the trees could speak and tell me their stories, I would learn their stories, and eventually I would notice enough details about their bark and trunks and leaves and branches to remember their names.  But I know that at first it would be where they are and what their stories are.  For people I need a similar framework -- a context for where they are and what their story is.  Then, after a few -- or many -- interactions, I'll remember their face.

In Berkeley, California, where I lived for four years, wisteria abounds.  It wouldn't do as well here, but lilac reminds me of wisteria.  Lilac leaves help me to identify it, too.  Daniel has pointed it out for years, so I've gotten pretty good at identifying it.  But it's work for me, paying attention to details of flowers and trees and houses.  I also want to know which trees are boxwood, Japanese maple, dogwoods.  My mom knew them.  When I was in my twenties, I did some weeding for my mom when she wasn't home because she had asked me to or mentioned it or maybe I was making up for being a pill, I don't remember.  When she came home and I showed her my progress, she said, "Those were all flowers that you pulled up."

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There is plenty for me to notice from the past year back here at home.  Does it matter whether the observations are from Italy or from Waltham?  No.  

Take the time, I tell myself, to notice and to sit with what you notice.  

Write it.