March 10, 2013

• Packiny g The Boxes Moving On

  I am looking around as I have done so many times to see what to take with me when I leave for Ohio, and I have boxes of many sizes to take the things I’ve collected over a year back to the river, and it is much harder this time, for I’m just now getting well enough to even want to go back to grandchildren, the moments I love to drive by the houses we rebuilt, then moved on from for a child needed a better school, or we were the city folk in suburbs, for there were a few places which just seemed away from what we value , that a house lives, breaths, takes in your soul piece by piece, and you will visit to see what happened to all that you once did when we can transport our ions across place and time — the way of Kirk and Spock; or when Jesus appeared in white garments and entrusted his disciples with the three tents of white gleaming in the sun; Was this a metaphor for the power of one who shall return when times are right, and the earth grows dark — Clouds making sounds of groans and thunder, and then the call, “The Call,” and shall we see the marvelous tents radiant against all things with a central figure we have called, “Behold Our God,” for if we are to believe in mysteries, then it would be satisfying to think that we can transverse death and enter where we please to see the work we left behind, to see ourselves at work or play, and to have those days when all feels so well.  We walk with the children until night fall.  What a sight, the vision of ourselves.

  What shall I place in my boxes, for I have acquired — Presents for another birthday, angels for another Christmas tree unless I return here by then, and I wish not to, for California is the suburb to me, and for all of the beautiful movies, somehow the arts simply do not speak to me in the same way as near the prarie  where the glaciers left more subtle marks, and where the very air itself becomes excited and electric, spinning off great storms and rainbows to mark their end.  I need to be back in this hospitable place where we swell with pride that we are beautiful in our actions governed by the purity of the way we were — As well as the way we might be.  I see things becoming less diverse in this place at times, for one way of thinking is governed by masses, and think the other way, and your out of the ballpark, and; “You are not good after all, because we know what is right for everyone,” and if all America was up to the standard of California values — Then all is right with the world.”  There seems to be some incongruentcy  in deciding one place is a model for how the country should go and the idea of diversity.  To be diverse, if I understand it, is that differences of thoughts and values are tolerated, and I just see a lot less of beating up on people for not accepting that just everything is not kosher in California, and that people hold on with claws to live a life which retorts, “We can live with the sentiment, but we are people with many beliefs, customs, and directions, but let the great storm fan over the land, and we will go to the unseen  brother or sister of mankind.

   

  Maybe I will take the unanswered Christmas letters and let people know that I needed no death certificate again as another blood clot decided to tear in to my right lung, but since it did not I am feeling nostalgia for Isaac’s baby garment, for Isabella’s gold cross which I got for her on the day of first communion.  I want some more pictures for Rebekah, for she loves pictures so, the daughter Jacob married and brought to our family, Rebekah.  Erica is one I save linens for, Isaac’s special wife, and for Mary — there are the little horse broaches,  and for Catherine, something she may keep for a while, just a while from my collection of small things, for many things are shattered, but I will give her something whole.  My boxes take weeks to unpack, a special dress if I go to a book signing, my favorite pens with which I write thoughts, and the pewter tray of, “Give Us This Day.”  I pack boxes well, for I know now that some will not be opened until I am but vapor on a cold morning’s air.  Dating with death too many times can make one morbid at times, but I will leave as much morbid out as I possibly can.  I asked for new sealing tape, and I already have the bubble wrap, and I close my ears when Frank suggests things are too expensive to ship anymore, for shipping cost more than to purchase, and so he says, but I know better.

  I want to take the fire which we use so much in San Francisco, for we are really not where you want to visit for a heat wave.  I have asked for a recipe or two, though the heartland people do not develop a taste for the ocean fish, so those I shall just leave behind except for when the fresh fish comes in at Whole Foods back there.  I have my presents from Christmas past, so those should go in, but my Valentine from Frank will store in my draws where I keep joy and sorrow, the small poems and prayers, and I hope to remember the passport, just in case we travel soon, though will we  The time seems rarely right, but I am even thinking that we might go to  the East Coast for a change, so I must make a summer when I am doing the important things, so in must go the list of life and what is important at this juncture. Of course, I will take my book boards off the wall, and I need the posters Frank had made for me, for as the experts have noted, that in a book cover contest, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” could easily take a first prize, but how to mail them, laminated and large would take a mailing box I cannot make, so maybe they are better left behind.

  I will see that everyone has their favorite soaps, and I will take things for the friends, the dear friends made over 30 years.  I do have The Emperor’s Tea which I ordered from China in the freezer, for we may save fine teas in just that way, and I am told of the medicinal power of the first leaves taken at the top of the bush in a special land where The Emperor’s regal court passed on gilded carriages with fine horses, and he declared that only the finest of tea grew in this soil and little makes it out of China.  My little books on teas, the proper sort, I have kept in a bookcase here, but perhaps one or two shall go with me to bring the mystique of my ancestors of England and the Isles back to Ohio, for under my skin which will blush with fire, the legend of the face which can hide no shock, just like the voice that trembles unless I prepare to keep Essential Tremor in check, but this face gives me away, and the maternal line of English mothers settled in on me, not the olive Indian of some of the boys, so yes; the tea shall go.

  My boxes are so filled and so heavy with thought that they can hardly be carried, and you do not want to open them on your own, for there is something mystical within them, and I cannot be certain that another can handle it, because I make it!  No one knows all of the secrets of what goes in, for I do not even pack them all myself, and maybe you do not know that of life, that even after the tape and the addresses are on, weighty things narrow and slide within the stash of boxes to be mailed, for it refuses to be left behind.  It is the transfiguration that happened over the time you have been away, and the creep in, seep in, like a downpour of rain, but only the weight gives it away that something was picked that you do not always want to bring along, for a year in a life is a very long time when we are forced to think about the years which sail by, sail on, and take you to the place where you are looking back upon yourself and the packing, and wondering why it was important to make it all right, each little box, stuffed with what you could not leave behind is rather much the same from place to place.

   These years, I do not know when I shall return here, for it becomes harder every year, for we get back to the other place, and things have changed there as well.  I can now make trips to Tennessee and not grieve so hard that Mama and Daddy are interred on the hill in Walnut Grove, but I like to take rocks and sea shells, little things that will last from my garden to them, so that will be the box of sacred things.  Stones and shells are sacred you ask?  All should know that one carries the sound of the sea, and the other has made a journey from the center of the earth, and you ask me if they are sacred?  All that will remain, and all that passes by, and all that we have loved has some nature of the sacred, and only we can dis-spell the nature of that being something good, something very good. 

  The good heart can turn the stone in to gold, and it can give the shell back to the sea, for our nature has the power to be glorious.  We are visitors in this realm, just for this moment; moments we will rarely count except when our expectations are high or they are broken, but we are so temporal, and yet we have the power of choosing wonderful.

  We can be shallow and resist the poetry of miracles, and we can call the pipers to play the music for our dance where we crush feet, crush the sign which read, “Goal,” and we can take away dreams which are precious unto those who carried us up to the ladder, up near the white tents, and we may choose to crush them like an army for the climb is steep and the travelers are weary, stomp the boxes and break the line of love with which they began.  It is a choice, and those who mock the choice at midnight when the deepest sleep summons us to answer in our dreams and before the dawn are apt to miss, “The Emperor’s Tea,” “The treasures in the boxes,” but most of all, “The power of the rock and the stone.”  

  I must go now, for, “The Emperor,” is passing by fat, filled, bathed and clothed in all of his finest gifts, so I must pack the box of charms, and make him welcome,  and perhaps he will leave the fabric for fine tents which I may sew for all who have gone before to rest in the warm and glorious sun of another time and another place.

  Barbara Everett Heintz,  Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon and Kindle Ready — Create Space, With awards in San Francisco, as well as a First in Hollywood, California Book Festivals 2012

   

   

  • 7:02 am
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