A Garden in Winter

My backyard faces south.  In Northern Climes, when the sun drops low in its circuit through the sky reaching its peak far from overhead like a backpack slung low on the back of a middle schooler, this is very important.  It means that this is the part of the yard that receives sun.  The snow which has been gracing us each week anywhere from 2" to 2 feet this winter, then melts in stripes, tracing the shadows of the trees and the buildings surrounding us.  Snow skirts my garden beds, flirting with the colors, much subdued during this, the season of rest.  Below ground things are happening.  Bulbs are sleeping and freezing; that much needed freeze that insures another year of blooms.  I, with my Southwest Desert upbringing, am in awe, each spring when the snow crocuses and hyacinths force their blooms from beneath striations of snow.  Life in a bed cluttered with the detritus of trees, dead brown leaves from the previous fall.

I look from my kitchen window and I see all my wind sculptures hurtling through stationary space.  Anchored to the frozen earth but engaged in their frenzied circuit around their axes, turned by the unrelenting southwest winds which breaks the bonds of the snowbanks with earth.  The crystals release their water ions into the air, lending water to the frozen earth.  I walk through the beds.  The smell is sharp, cold, metallic.  There are colors here, even in the death of winter.  The frozen oranges and yellows of ground cover  when moisture is burst from the cells of the leaves during our below zero snaps.  Despite this heavy-handed caress of nature, there are still expressions of green in the surroundings of yellow, orange and brown.  Something is still living in my garden.  It is my bachelor buttons.  Always constant despite the freezing breath of winter.  My bachelor buttons and choral bells are stagnant but very much alive.

I watch the head of a bird peek out from the newest birdhouse perched on the trunk of the ash that frames my perpetual garden of painted blooms on my garage.  He is roosting, waiting out winter in the dubious warmth of the wooden birdhouse with the license plate roof.  He is waiting for spring as am I and my garden.  My yard has been silent lately.  We saw a raptor sitting in the lower limbs of the Ash tree.  The squirrels and the birds must be hiding from him, as our offering of sunflower seeds from our own sunflowers are left to languish uneaten in the bird feeder.  Ignored for later days when it is safe to traverse my yard to settle winter's rumble in their tummies.

The sun is creeping back up the horizon, and now shines through my dining room window; a marker of longer days.  A glimpse of even longer days to come despite the chill of the air, and the metallic promise of more cold weather and snowstorms.  It is this sunlight that beckons me to my garden.  I smell the air, testing it for the smell of warmed earth.  I am too early for this sensation.  The sunlight fools me.  It makes me think that the burgeoning growth of spring is just around the corner.  In this, my 25th year in Montana, I know better.  I know not to plant new plants until late May at the earliest.  May, still months away.  But the perennials already planted, the primrose, the pasque flowers, the daffodils and tulips will jump the gun flirting with the frozen air and slowly warming breezes; will bloom in March or April.  These brave harbingers of growth, green and promise of longer days and scented air.

I step back into the warmth of my home, to watch my windmills spin away the days.  Longing for growth, for freedom, for life.  I watch.  I wait.

Sometimes I am an Escapee to Life

I am...dreaming?  Am I awake/living, asleep/dreaming?   I am running.  Talking to my father (deceased) and mother (divorced and remarried).  I am... asleep/dreaming.  My sleeping mind remembers an alarm clock set for 10:30 a.m.  It plays the radio; shuts off unattended by myself who is locked in dreaming sleep on the other side of the bed.  Slowly, slowly I surface.  Am I awake?  I am in bed.  I feel the pillows, the sheets, the bed.  I cannot yet open my eyes.  My mind moves from my active dreams reluctantly to my actual true life.  Me.  In bed.  Daylight comes in around the edges of the shades.  I hear my chimes which activate to sunlight.  Sunlight means daylight.  Another day.  Trapped in sleep.  My eyes are puffy from my nighttime intake of craisins and semi-sweet chocolate chips.  Yesterday I climbed from sleep at 4:30 pm.  I could not succumb to sleep until 4 a.m.  Nighttime is dangerous.  I am awake, but trying to calm myself into sleep.  I read.  I watch Netflix on my Kindle.  I play on-line Scrabble, word games.  And I eat the forbidden.  I cannot eat anything out of a box or package.  To do so is to subject myself to a day locked in sleep, in dreams that won't let go, in sleep that cannot be conquered, to awaken to a body stiff and to eyelids puffy and face looking like my 79 year old mother.  I, after all, am 55.

On the days I sleep and awaken late, I sit.  I read, but am tired of reading, I play, but am tired of playing.  I am too tired to do.  My creativity must have energy in order to capture itself in the breath of life.  I sit. I tire.  If it is a good day, I can cook myself a small meal.  I can wet my hair and put it up, drive myself to the gym.  There I exercise.  Sixteen minutes each on the recumbent bike, the ellipticycle, the rowing machine, the arm cycle.  I mingle without talking with other human beings.  Young, old, male, female, fat, fit.  I stretch.  I drink. In the sauna, are young and old.  I read my Kindle, hoping that it can take the heat.

On some days my exercise gives me energy.  On others, it takes energy.  I have lost 13-15 pounds.  Right now I am stuck between 181 and 182.  Back and forth for a month now.

So...no creativity.  Dreaming.  Sleeping.  Exercising.  It takes me hours to gather the energy to feed myself.  I am fine if I limit myself to whole foods.  If I succumb to chocolate, wheat, cheese or milk, I trap myself in another day of puffy sleeping/dreaming/not living.  A repetitive cycle, self-fulfilling nothing.

I remember...working fulltime.  Working with kids and their families.  Taking care of my family.  Eleven years past now.  One child half way through college, the other out on her own and training to solo walk the Pacific Crest Trail, 1500 miles, 5 months, 26 miles/day from Mexico to Canada.  You go, girl!  You are my strong and wonderful offspring, capable of so much more than I.

My dreams are better than real life now.  My friends and acquaintances silent or gone.  So many only through work. No more work, no more friends.  Some that hang on and will meet me, despite their busy work schedules for lunch.  Others are too busy and say so.  So quickly and easily you lose friends.  Talking with my sister about my hot flashes.  I am the big sister, she is the little.  She says that in talking with her girlfriends, we are late bloomers to menopause.  "Really?", I reply.  "I have no girlfriends, so I didn't know."  "I doubt that," says my sister.  Who would my girlfriends be?  Phone calls are hard.  I no longer work.  Where would these people come from?  When you sleep and exist indoors, people do not come knocking at your door asking what's wrong?  How can I help?  I have my husband, who works.  My children with their own lives.  My mother who is battling dementia and poor health in North Carolina.  Who are my "girlfriends"?  I have acquaintances only.  My "friends" on Facebook, thumbs up or absent.

This is my now.  This is my life.  Hopefully, tonight I eat the right things, and have the energy to live...or at least drive the van to the gym where people do not know that I am an Escapee to Life.