Circles Spiraling

I walk along the shore looking in the water and all I see is sky—so much sky. Then a cloud comes over and my life feels dreary, dark, and lonely. The water looks murky, not clear and lovely, not like it’s mine anymore. Why’d that cloud take my view from me? What’s that cloud doing in my sky?

My sky. Who am I to own the sky?

I smile. I forgive the cloud, and I forgive me. Then I start over.

I walk along the shore picking up small shells I like. I admire the little ripples on them. They look like small half-circles growing ever wider, almost spiraling outward, growing as they move onward. I have a thought that I could learn from these little shells. I wonder whether I might be growing as I’m moving onward?

I look out over the water. Like my legs go all the way to the ground, the water goes all the way to the sky. I think how my life is like the water, never quite still, seeming clear, but only on the surface. I can see only so far ahead. I think I’m so easy to see through. I bet the water does too. I laugh to think we’re both all wet.

I walk out on the rocks at the question mark pier. I feel like the dot on the question. I feel like the wind that blows over me. I feel like a five-year-old turning circles on the playground. I look down into the water. It’s the clearest I’ve ever seen it. The clouds are showing respect.

I hold a small shell in palm of my hand, running my thumb over the small half-circles. Then I drop it to set it free, to watch it spiraling into the water. For one split second, I’m surprised, then delighted, by the circles that it makes on the surface. I drop another shell, then another, and two more.

All the circles interlace and intertwine. They’re all connected like lace. Somehow it reassures me as they grow wider and wider. I half expect to see them reflected in the sky, when I look up smiling.

I wish them well as they become part of the beautiful lake.

I walk back up the rocks of the question mark. Back to my world where I am still a dot.

My world. Who am I to think it is my world?

I smile. I forgive the world, and I forgive myself.

Then I start moving outward, growing to become part of the universe, like the other stars in our spiral galaxy.

hearttree

—me strauss Letting me be

Beginning

I.
The child awoke
slowly
not quite knowing where she was
but definitely know that she was
Feeling threatened
yet challenged
she decided to face the world
and to explore this thing
called existence.
II.
Off on a private
yellow brick road
meeting minds
scanning faces
sharing, searching
private places
needing answers
finding questions
following absurd
well-meant suggestions
“Look in here”
“Find it there.”
answers imminent
questions distant
nowhere somewhere
III.
As night returned
slowly
not quite showing what it was
but definitely showing that it was
Shining solace
and relief, release
She sensed herself “me”
She held it with hope
glowing and free.
She kept it close as hers
the beginning.

—me strauss Letting me be

Raining Flowers

If I could have one day in a magical universe, one day to just do as I wish, I would ask to make a day when the world was feeling no pain.

Little kids would have no toothaches. Old folks would have no backaches. Parents would have no headaches. Lovers would have no heartaches. Old wounds wouldn’t chafe at people. Forgiveness would flow like water. Compassion would sparkle like stars. Wouldn’t that feel nice?

Imagine how much softer everyone’s face might look, if we all laid down our sorrows, if only for a day. Picture how lovely every pair of eyes would be looking back in our own. Hands would want to hold each other. Reaching for a hug wouldn’t be a wonder. Sharing a space would be so easy, easy would be easier than it already is.

The sky would be brighter, bluer, newer, because we would all feel newer—like we'd just been born, like nothing had harmed us yet. No harm, no foul, no pain, no sorrow.

Then . . .

I would make sure that it was raining flowers, at least once every hour. To remind us of how beautiful we all are.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Boy and the Dike

I’ve been thinking about the boy with his thumb in the dike—the one who saved the whole village. He’s been on my mind for a while now. I keep seeing this picture of this happy, blond boy with his thumb in a cracked wall of clay-like concrete. Villagers are all around him, cheering, laughing, and clapping. But he’s stuck with his thumb in the wall.

I have to get him out.

So I’m going to finish the story.

The boy’s best friends, Vincent and Inga, couldn’t see what everyone had to celebrate. René was standing there stuck with his thumb in the dike, for Godsake. Sure the village was saved, but if they didn’t work quickly, he would be stuck there until his thumb fell off from gangrene. Hadn’t anyone thought of that?

Together the two young teens, brother and sister both tall and lean, ran to their farm. Vincent went to the kitchen to grab a bowl, while Inga scooped up sand and gravel to put in it. Then they went to the schoolhouse and took some chalk. In front of the old schoolhouse step, they used a rock to pound the chalk into dust and added it to the sand and gravel. They mixed all three together and added water to make a rough concrete.

Vin and Inga ran back to the dike.

“We’re here, René.” they called, running up.

“Did you bring a chair? Or something to eat?” René was cheerful, just like the story said.

“No, we brought something better.”

In no time at all, Vincent and Inga pushed the grown-ups out of the way, freed their friend, and plugged the hole in the dike. Then they handed the rest of their concrete mix to two men. The teenagers suggested that they get some friends and get to work repairing the crack before the dike breaks again.

The kids headed off to find something to eat and three chairs.

A little while later the Pied Piper of Hamlin came by, led some rats over the dike into the water where the rats drowned. The Pied Piper swam back to safety.

But that’s a different story.

—me strauss Letting me be

Finding My Feet

If my life were a movie, I think they’d have a problem finding the coming of age part. I seem to find my feet and then lose track of them again. I don’t doubt that I do that on purpose in the same way that a three-year old loses her shoes, because she has no real reason to keep track of them.

I have a use for my feet, but deep inside I don’t really want to keep them in charge. Finding my feet, knowing who I am seems so set and final. I can appreciate the value in that—roots and foundation, a steely structure on which others can rely. But . . .

Beaches don’t have feet. The world would be so much less without their shifting sands. And waves, even if you couldn’t see waves rolling, listening to them would still help calm the heart of one who’s feet left the ground when the rug was pulled out.

The sun can shine without two feet under it, and kites are carried on a wind that never stops to be upright.

I guess I’m more like one of them, a changing type. Maybe that’s why I'm always moving. When I’m dancing my whole body knows exactly who I am.

Some feet know dancing, more than standing. That’s the best that I can figure.

When my feet stop dancing, I'll sort the rest. Until then, I know I'm dancer.

Do I really need to know anything else?

—me strauss Letting me be

Double Exposure

They have a name for déjà vu. That thing that happens when the world seems to be having some sort of instant replay of your life in a moment right after another. Crosby, Stills, and Nash even sang about it. But there’s this other thing that happens. It’s the same, but slightly different.

It works like this.

I’ll be halfway through my day and I’ll find myself thinking that I need to talk to my brother. I’ll know that what he told me yesterday was just . . . wrong. I’ll start forming my argument for how his thinking was totally off base and prepare to call him. Then I’ll realize that I haven’t talked to my brother for at least two months—since my last birthday. I must be thinking of a conversation that I had a dream about.

My son just discovered this phenomena when he was home from college over spring break. He had one word for it. Irritating.

I told him it happens even more often and with more chilling clarity when you have the kind of jet lag that you get from 25 hours of airplane flights. That it can go on for three days before your brain readjusts. It’s like your mind needs airing out or something.

One of these times, I’m actually going to call my brother. I’ll call and my brother will think I’m going loony. With two brothers, there’s twice the chance.

If there’s a name for déjà vu, why isn’t there a name for this strange double dreaming phenomena?

I need one fast. I’m facing double exposure.

—me strauss Letting me be

Dwingeloo

It’s been a while since I’ve left the galaxy. The night’s so clear and spring has left the sky bright with black. The Milky Way holds no charm for me. Winter has taken that. So I’m stilling myself again. Quiet now. Here I go.

Up like a feather I rise to reach the edge, I’m headed out to Dwingeloo. I lean back, as if I’m floating. I let my feet take the lead for once. I wonder as I go. Did an Australian name this neighbor galaxy? It’s got that Australian sounding kind of name. Dwingeloo. Why didn’t we hear about that spiral galaxy when I was still in school?

I just know I would have made up stories about a place called Dwingeloo.

Now I have to settle for a visit one Friday night here in my mind.

Dwingeloo. Home of dragons and fairy princesses. I know that magical things must happen inside that spiral I see. Maybe you’re the parallel universe we all talk about. Maybe you’re the place where there’s another me.

Dwingeloo. Home of Dwingeliz.

That’s too much imagining for even me.

—me strauss Letting me be

Perfect Timing

When I was a child and Uncle Frank came for dinner, he would always ask, “How come every time you bend your elbow your mouth flies open?”

Bend your elbow, mouth flies open, food goes in.

Perfect timing.

I think about my life and how much of it is perfect timing. Little miracles fill my days, little miracles like walking, talking singing, riding a bike, driving a car—all perfect timing. My dad lifts me in the air. I meet my husband. I catch my son’s face in that rare and special grin he gets when no one’s looking. I hear him say, “I hope so!” and mean it—an accident of perfect timing every one is, surely.

I had a job where I could take time off to be with my mother when she was sick.

It’s funny how the world clock works that way.

All of these little moments timed so perfectly, like when I bend my elbow and my mouth flies open—perfect timing.

My Uncle Frank was on to something.

—me strauss Letting me be

Fiction: The Omen

She believed in omens. She saw them everywhere and knew exactly what each of them meant. He didn’t see them, nor did he put much stock in what they might mean. Omens to him meant giving up control. He wasn’t about to do that. She didn’t try to convince him otherwise.

They had been laughing about their differences on the subject right before she went upstairs to read. The book she had brought was an old favorite, Illusions by Richard Bach. It was the only book by that author that she had ever liked. She said she liked it enough to make up for the fact that she didn’t like the rest.

Her favorite place to read was upstairs at the desk facing the huge arched window with the Texas sun pouring in on her as she sat in her grandmother’s straight-backed, cushioned-seat chair. That space put the stairs, the house, her whole worldly life behind her and the entire sky before her. She said it made her feel free to enjoy the words.

As he walked up the stairs to bring her a cold drink, he saw the shadow her figure made on the floor was the perfect shape of a 4x4 wooden cross. He stopped to stare at it. It was an omen if ever he saw one. He choose not to tell her.

Some omens are meant not to be shared, or spoken of, or if you’re lucky, even seen.

—me strauss Letting me be

Life's Pleasures

Sometimes my thoughts run fast like a child out on the hills, free in the sunlight with worlds to explore. Sometimes they're stuck like a car in traffic behind a diesel spewing truck.

They're always there, it seems, just that millisecond a head of me, knowing what I’m going to think next—sometimes jumping, leaping unconsciously to a totally new place. I’ve not a clue how I got there.

I wonder what I would do were I left only with my thoughts for company. I think my friend was right. It’s not a pleasant thought to have to live inside my head.

I think I’ll take a walk outside instead and let the world get some of me.

There’s nothing wrong with the idea that a chocolate milkshake is more profound than what I might be thinking now. It would surely be more satisfying.

Life’s pleasure aren’t all made up or priceless. Some are right down the street.

—me strauss Letting me be

At the End of the Tunnel

Sometimes the winter seems like a long tunnel that contains fall and stretches from the last warm days of summer to the first warm days of spring.

Though the sky might go blue for a time now and then in between people seem to stop believing in things like flowers, and picnics, and playgrounds, and “How do you dos.”

Then the first warm air slides through the city. A crocus pushes up through the ground next to a high-rise building where a gardener hasn’t yet visited. Jackets get lighter. People walk just a bit slower and don’t quite shiver as they wait for the bus at the stop outside my building.

In the morning when I go to make coffee, the sun starts to be up before I am. The lake starts to look blue again. A sailboat has returned. Soon there will be many.

At the end of my sight there’s light. We’re coming out of the tunnel.

It’s not one minute too early.

The color, the beauty of spring holds a promise that’s blindly beautiful to me. My eyes hurt with pleasure already just to imagine seeing it. Bliss—the vision of spring.

—me strauss Letting me be

Playing in the Fountain

Sometimes I get pedalling so fast that when a time comes that I can slow down, I don’t. I think that there will be so much to do again, that I’d better get a headstart on it. I keep on working at barely a slower speed. Folks around me wouldn’t even notice. How could they? I don’t even skip a beat. I keep moving. No stopping, just going, going, going.

Is it a wonder that I feel tired at the end of the day? and in the afternoon? and in the morning?
Not today . . . today I decided that since the work is caught up and more stuff is coming I am going to play. I’m going to open up my brain and let wind blow right on through it. A little airing out in there will do me a world of good. I’m smiling from the inside out just thinking about it.

The sky is blue. The lake is too. My blue eyes are going out to join them.

I’ll be just like a little kid, playing in a fountain.

When I come back in from playing, the work will still be here.

I bet my brain will get three times as much done then.

—me strauss Letting me be

Faith, Hope, and Love

Faith, hope, and love, the greatest of these is . . .
That’s the modern translation of a quote by a holy man.

I’ve been thinking about that quote on and off for a while. I don’t know how long. It could be days, months, maybe years. It comes. It goes. I think of it. I don’t know what brings it to mind particularly. I do know this. In my case, the holy man didn’t get it right. There is no one of the three that is greater than the other two.

For me, they can’t exist without each other.

I need all three in equal measure.To choose one is to say one season is greater. One part of the day is not more important. One heartbeat is not more vital. No part is greater than the whole. Not for me.

Faith, hope, and love belong together, intertwined as one.

I have faith in you. You are my hope and my future. I love you.

Faith, hope, and love. I give them, and they come back to me. All three together.

—me strauss Letting me be

Carnivals, Circuses, and Cartwheel Galaxies.

When I was little, I didn’t have much time for words. Information in the air was plentiful. Ideas and messages were always coming at me. I could judge the tenor of a personality by taking a reading of the atmosphere. So what did words have to do with me? Usually words ended up confusing me. At the very least they complicated things. I ignored them when I could.

That left me with brain glitches when it came to certain words. To this day I have these couples that to me are like Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman. I have to think about to keep them straight. Catalogue and calendar is one couple. I have to stop to remember. It’s the same with a pedestrian and a Presbyterian.

There was one set that it didn’t matter if I got them reversed, because in my dancing childhood mind they meant the same thing to me—carnival, circus, and cartwheel. I used to think the Ferris wheel at the carnival would have been better named the cartwheel anyway because it so looked like one. Maybe if Mr Ferris had named it so, it wouldn’t have scared me quite so much. I might have actually gotten on one more than once. Or maybe not. With an aggravating big brother out to make me squeal the outcome might have been the same.

When I did cartwheels in dance class, I felt like I was in the carnival and the circus. When I did them in the backyard, I felt like I was a Ferris wheel gone amok. So I could see all three words really as one. I mean I really could see them side-by-side in living color—colorful, round, and all lit up.

Tonight I read about the Cartwheel Galaxy and saw a photo of it taken by the Hubble telescope. I’d never heard of it before. Memories of playing carnival in my backyard filled up my mind. Or were we playing circus?—I used to get all three words mixed up.

Carnivals, Circuses, and Cartwheel Galaxies.

That makes for one really nice universe.

I bet that galaxie spins round and round, just like the Ferris wheel at the . . .

you know where I’m talking about.

—me strauss Letting me be

Too Many Options--Free Again

On the wall in a classroom at my high school was a sign that said
Not to decide is to decide.
I knew what it meant. At least I thought I did.

I’ve always been the kind of person who likes to keep my options open. Even as a child, I had a hard time with the decisions that other kids took for granted. I didn’t have a favorite color until I was 31. I still have trouble saying that I have a best friend or deciding what I think good looking is or choosing my favorite ice cream. I’m that one who could answer every question on the SAT Test with two words, “It depends.”

However, this morning I came to a learning, a lesson that surprised, startled, and somehow set me free. I realized that open doors can contain me in the same way that closed doors can.

The waiting and wondering whether an option might happen stops me from moving and making choices. I get involved in the possibilities of the futures I might make. The more options I start to consider the more I start to get frozen in one place. I become more and more like a deer in the headlights. Until finally, I am one.

Today I stopped. I made a choice from the options, and I told the rest to go away. As soon as I did, I felt relieved and ready to move forward again. It was like walking through an open door out into the sunshine. I feel free, light, and joyful again. My feet are no longer nailed to the ground. I’m in control, and my life is my own.

Holding on to too many options meant not having any.

—me strauss Letting me be

In the Air

Have you noticed a certain energy? It’s started happening. Twice this week, the lake’s been blue. Even though people are still wearing jackets, they’re coming out more. They’re on the street. They’re walking around, riding bikes. They’re holding hands and talking to each other. They’re smiling. It’s something special. It’s in the air.

It’s a certain sort of tremulous energy. I keep picturing every 33rd electron in the air giggling.

It’s there, but not quite there for sure. I bet if you hold yourself still, you’d feel it too. Movement, gentle, sweet. A feeling that the sky is clearing. The season’s lifting. I haven’t seen a robin, yet. But spring is coming.

It’s in the air.

—me strauss Letting me be

Comprehension

What I can't seem to comprehend is
that the way the world works is
the way the world works.

To me that is proof
that there is more
to this universe than
the eye can see.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Party in My Mind

The place where I live in my mind is what they call “homey,” but elegant. It’s not Martha Stewart. That would be too flat, too cold. Sunlight comes in through the windows to shine on the berries on the dining room table. The table is wood, round, and real. So are the people who come to visit are real too.

The walls are rich, soft colors that would draw my friend, Garnet, in. Gold I think to play off the deep red glow of his heart and the music on the stereo would let Betty whirl be her charm. The trees out the window invite all kinds of wildlife so that Kelley and Doug would join them. Rain would come shortly thereafter in her quiet way. And Mark would chuckle in right after her.

Everyone would finally meet Marti. Marti would meet Lori with Zilla and Cheryl who’d be by the fireplace listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash. All of us would be pretending we’re in the movie, “The Big Chill,” and we’d turn and look when Scot came in carrying his unused snowshoes and laughing. (His cat would be close behind, looking for one purple crayon to play with.)


Next thing you’d know the T-three would arrive—Trace, Trée and Toadman—just in time for tea and tall tales. They’d be the ones telling them. At first we’d be surprised, then we’d know.

This is how friends act when let loose in my mind. Liz of Singapore is thinking she’s glad she doesn’t have to live in my head.

But don’t forget that it’s not a party. It’s just having friends over.

Parties put too much pressure on everyone.

—me strauss Letting me be

Sky Blue Pink

The first time I ever saw Silly Putty, my mom gave me the little egg, fully packaged, as we got in the car to go to my Aunt Mary’s house in the little doll house down about 30 miles down the road. I might have been around six-years-old. It took me until we got out of town and onto the highway before I got the plastic wrapping around the cardboard off and the egg out.

My mother was good like that. She knew how to keep kids occupied. It wasn’t manipulation, really. It was expert planning on her part. Always it was win-win. She got peace and quiet. We got entertained.

When I finally got the red plastic egg in my hand it took a mile or two again before I figured out how it opened. When I did, I guess I was a little disappointed at the lump of unexciting color. My mom, not one to be outdone, said it was a wonderful color. “That’s sky blue pink,” she called it.

I kind of shook my head and told her I had never heard of that color.
“Oh, but you’ve seen it. Everyone has,” she said. “It’s when the sky goes pink, when it’s still blue. That’s why they call it sky blue pink.”

About then is when she handed me the full-color comics from the newspaper over the front seat to me in the back seat. She taught me how to press the putty on a picture and copy it. Then it was only a matter of seconds before the thought of stretching it occurred. I was busy until the 30 minute trip was over. Actually I was still playing with the silly toy all the way home.

But what stays with me is the color. I still think that Silly Putty is beautiful.

I still think of it when I see the slightest touch of pink among the blue.
“Sky blue pink,” she called it.

I know you’ve never heard of it, but you’ve seen it. Everyone has.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Art of Skipping Stones Across a River

Some people see a stone in the water making ripple and they see a metaphor. Me, I see my childhood—skipping stones in the river. That was an adventure that could take a week and didn’t cost a thing. Craig and I were pros at skipping stones. We could do it in our sleep. Though we never actually tried. We weren’t allowed out at night—let alone down by the river after the sun had gone down.

Craig and I collected skipping stones. Those stones were the product of days and days of serious searching. They say a good man is hard to find. A good skipping stone is even harder and you only get to use it once. A skipping stone needs to be smooth and flat and about the size of the circle made when your index finger gently touches your thumb. A good skipping stone also needs to have a balance that makes it feel like it rocks perfectly in the palm of your hand.

When we had 6 or 7 perfect skipping stones collected, Craig and I would sit on the riverbank under the famous white oak. We’d talk about the challenges of the “Great Skipping Stone Contest” we were about to undertake. We’d set our goals—5 skips for the first stone, then 6 skips, then 7 skips to win. We’d never plan for all of the stones we’d collected . . . to be left without skipping stones was a pain not to contemplate.

The contest would start. Sometimes neither of us would reach any of our goals. Sometimes we’d both make all of them. It didn’t really matter. The fun was in the doing, not in the points we made.

Ah, but when you see a stone perfectly skipping across the water . . . the miracle of a rock defying gravity is a beauty to behold.

If you can make a stone skip 7 times across a river, you can do most anything in the whole wide world.

—me strauss Letting me be

Reflecting on Marble Games

In the town where I grew up there was a marble factory. The factory was there because our town had pure silica sand. There was also a glass factory to make windows for cars. As a young, young man, my father made mirrors in a room silvering them by hand in the 1930s. To this day, beveled glass and hand-made mirrors fascinate me. I see my father’s hands in every one.

But it was the marble factory that captured our attention when we were kids. We all knew how to play marbles. All kids should know how. I’m saddened that they won’t. Still that wasn’t the draw either.

The secret was behind the factory. There you could find the marble rejects. The marbles there were flat.

The flat discs of glass would be left out in the open for kids to take. Red, blue green, yellow glass. They sparkled. They shone. Yet they were thought to have no value because they weren’t round like they were supposed to be.

I would scoop them up by the handfuls, those rejected marbles, and take them home. I can’t begin to tell you how many games you can play with marbles that don’t misbehave and roll away.

I see them in every colored glass object I encounter. I still smile to think of them. I still know all of the games and all of the silly rules.

Sometimes the oddballs make the best memories.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Doorway

When I find myself at the end of a long day, finally able to kick off my shoes, I sit down, put my headphones on, lean back, and just be. Letting me be . . . it’s something I’ve been working on for a while now. I wonder if I’ll ever get close. I wonder if I’m meant to get there or if I’m just meant to try.

The trying’s not such a bad thing. It’s filled with life and learning. The mirrors aren’t the best part, but they no longer hurt me. I think I’m actually getting used to what I see . . . starting to call her a person, making friends with me, sort of like I do my food. That thought makes me smile.

I listen to the music and ride it down to that place inside me that’s like being out in space. It’s the place where stars, words, and colors live with feelings. It’s my universe. I come here when I want to write, when I want to hide, when I want to find my way. When I am here I can see past the planets to the most amazing things in the sky.

Heaven may be up above us.

But I know I will get there through a doorway deep inside.

—me strauss Letting me be

Problems and Mysteries

When we face a problem, we may not know its solution,
but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for.


When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

—Steven Pinker, How the Brain Works

Not everything I say is important or profound.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Mighty Crocus

I never was one for growing bulb flowers. They seemed such work to me for what you got. You had to go out in the cold for hours to put them in the hard ground in November and then you had to wait. And wait forever. The following spring they would show up for maybe two weeks of color. Maybe two weeks they would be there if you were lucky and they had had enough to feed themselves from the soil. So I got my tulips and other bulb flowers from the florist, thinking that’s what all sane people do.

Then I moved into a house with a forgotten garden. The garden had once been beautifully landscaped that was now overgrown. I hardly had time to figure out what was there, for all the time I spent pulling weeds and taking things out of the way.

The house was in the woods and just down the lane from Red Riding Hood’s House in Eastern Massachusetts. They’d taken care of the wolf the previous year, so the garden and the leaves from some 200 trees were my biggest problems. We never saw the little girl in the red cloak.
Oh, there was one other problem. The snow. The snow.

When it snowed, it mean the snow plow on the driveway, every four inches. That meant every four hours, which was four times in one day. It snowed four or five times a winter. The snow was wet and white and heavy. The air was clear and cold. The winter was long and filled with snow.
After months of that kind of winter, the need for spring is something close to starving. Just one blade of grass would be a gift that I’d carry in to place carefully in a vase to share. If I saw one . . . but I didn’t for what seemed like years.

One morning backing out of the garage, I glimpsed a bit color, something purple to my left. A bird I thought it must be. I looked again. It didn’t move. I stopped the car and I walked over. It was a flower. A crocus standing in the patch of white.

I couldn’t believe the feeling. Elation. Excitement. Joy. Hope?

The Mighty Crocus had vanquished the gloom of snow. A little bulb flower had made my day.
Spring was coming. I was sure.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Index of Refraction

“The index of refraction is equal to the reciprocal angle,” he said. It was high school physics class and it just came out of his mouth, like it was English, like we were supposed to understand it. I paid attention, but I had not a clue what he was talking about.

That was how this class was turning out for me. This was week three and I wasn’t liking it, No, not liking it one bit. I wasn’t used to understanding something. I had no experince of this feeling and I didn’t know what to do with it. I went home to my mother.

“I hate this class. I want to drop it.”

“You will not. I didn’t raise a quitter.”

“But I’m failing it. I know it.”

My mother called him. He betrayed me. He told her I had a top grade going. End of story. I was staying in the class. No more discussion.

I listened harder. I found out that the refraction had to do with light through the water. It had to do with how straws in water looked like they bent when they didn’t. The bend was the index of refraction of the light. I’m not sure I remember where the reciprocal angle comes in. I was more fascinated by the little bubbles that formed along the straw that seemed to climb it. They offer so much more for the imagination. When might they move and where could they be going? Could they be their own small universes? If I were inside one could I see out?

To this day, though, I remember that sentence, and sometimes when I want to sound really erudite I say it. “The index of refraction is equal to the reciprocal of the critical angle . . . and then I add, “but only when the light’s turned on, and anyway I like the bubbles better.”

Ironically when I got to college, I really excelled in physics. I aced all five tests with the highest grade. It was much easier than high school.

Never once did the index of refraction sentence come up. Darn. I was ready for it.

—me strauss Letting me be

Two Men, a Phrase Book, and Lake Trasimeno

My mom used to say, “It’s never late until midnight and after that it’s early.” By that measure we went to bed. Very early the sun was just coming up and we slept well past lunch. We’d just finished our showers, when two young men we met the night before by to pick us up.

We rode on their scooters out to Lake Trasimeno.

The four of us ate the best bread and parmesan cheese and drank wine. We swapped conversation from a phrase book and drew pictures in my journal. We laughed a lot too. It’s amazing how interesting a phrase book conversation can be. I’d page through to the automotive part of the little book, point to my head and say, “The battery is dead.”

It was true enough. Cognac and dancing until sunrise can do that.

We enjoyed ourselves until the sun went down over the lake. Then we road back to Perugia to get ready to head for the airport in the morning.

Nancy and I debrief our entire adventure—Assisi, St. Francis, the ogre, the prince, Perugia, the Lake. We talked as we packed. We talked as we got ready for bed. We talked as we stared at the ceiling in the dark. I think we might have still been talking about our adventure even after we feel asleep.

The next day after a drive during which we talked some more, we said our good-byes at the airport in Bologna. I flew back through London. She through Frankfurt.

On the plane heading home, I couldn’t help but think how the language difference had appealed to my sense of space—as much as the countryside had.

Maybe words get in people’s way as much as they bring us together.

The silence on the airplane was welcome. So were thoughts of home.
I put on my headphones, fell asleep, and dreamed of my own pillow.

—me strauss Letting me be

Perugia and the Legend

The next morning Nancy said, “Enough of this, I got you into this guy’s house now I’m getting us both out. We’re heading to the city. Perugia.”

Okay, so Perugia is no New York or Chicago, but that’s not what we went to Italy for. It wasn’t Milan or Florence either, but we really didn’t mind. We liked that it wasn’t what we were leaving—a house filled with an ill-tempered, disgruntled, unhappy grumbler. We had more energy than the car as we moved east at fair clip through the Umbrian hills.

We got there in the late morning. Started with a leisurely cappuccino and great conversation—two world travelers talking al fresco. Then we hit the streets for serious shopping and sightseeing. No coins in the fountain, but much discussion about the weddings and proposals that that might have occurred there. It’s fun when two people share the same sense of imagination. We watched the people who walked by, especially the couples holding hands and smiling. There were plenty. We made up stories about most of them—who they were and how they met.

We found a little hotel early. It wasn’t the house of luxury. We didn’t care. It wasn’t the house of the folks in Assisi either. We kept saying that. I guess we really we were glad to be away from there. Sometimes you don’t realize how much something bugs you, until you don’t have to deal with it anymore and feel the relief.

We skipped lunch. She was buying shoes. I wasn’t hungry. We spent hours in and out of buildings, looking at things, touching things, and talking—well trying to talk to people with what little Italian I still have. Then we headed back to our hotel for a nap, a little sleep before a night in the little city.

It was a night we both needed. We were in a little bar. The crowd spilled out into the darkness. In the loud music, there seemed to be people from so many places, speaking so many languages. Cognac, music, dancing, and laughter, lots and lots and lots of laughter. With each cognac my smile got bigger and my Italian got better. So did their English as far as I could hear.

The laughter had something to do with the legend we were telling. It was called, “The Legend of the Ogre and the Princess of Assisi.” The Princess got more beautiful. The ogre got more evil and grotesque as the night went on.

The cognac only got better. As did the music, the dancing, and the legend.

We were two Amercians in Perugia.

Laughter means the same thing in every language. So does evil ogre. That's so cool.

—me strauss Letting me be

Assisi, But He's No St. Francis

One thing nice about having a friend with lots of air miles is that you never know when she’ll decide that half-way around the world is “in the neighborhood,” and jump on a plane to get there. I was in a car, leaving Tuscany for Umbria to Assisi and a house in the hills. Nancy was friends with a couple who had a house there. She skied with them several times a year. They’d invited us to stay with them for a week.

I wasn’t much of one for staying in a stranger’s house, but an adventure with my best of friends in the hills of Umbria was too good to pass up.

I arrived at a villa. Do you call it a villa in Italy? It was fabulous—a movie set should look so good. I sat in the car for at least five minutes looking at it, thinking this was a place where you change into your best jeans for breakfast. Nancy would do fine with these folks. She could have been a senator’s wife or an ambassador. She was made of that kind of stuff. Me, I wasn’t so sure I’d know the right way to say, “Hello.”

I was greeted at the door by a bronzed couple with smiles that made my eyes hurt. She was sunlight. He was a rain cloud in autumn, dark with thunder and leaves gone to mush. She had a certain knack for ignoring him. I had a certain inclination for feeling everything she ignored. Nancy came down from the room upstairs and showed me around the place. She saved our room with the view for the very last.

The mornings were spectacular. We pushed open the shutters and saw the sunrise over the hillsides. The afternoons were frivolous—two friends in a car, exploring the countryside, including the history of the famous saint, Francis, who came from these parts. The evenings were dinner with three friends and one exceptionally bad-tempered man. My friend and hers had their ways of ignoring him. I had my ways of not saying, “ouch.” The late nights were conversations with stars coming in through the crack before we closed the shutters.

We talked about the mean man downstairs.

It was like a slumber party. She was in her bed. I was in mine. We talked in the dark.

“Ooooh how rude he is. That guy makes me crazy,” I finally said on day three or four. “He has all this, and he can’t find a way to be happy. Why does he say mean things? I just don’t get it.”

“Yeah, he’s a bit much. I’ve never spent this much time with him before.”

“What’s ironic is we spent the day hearing about a guy who gave up everything and got named a saint. Then we spent the night listening to a guy who has everything complain about nothing.”

“Maybe we should call up some relative of St. Francis.”

“They're probably sleeping. Besides, what would they do?”

“I don't know. You're the Catholic. Maybe they'd pray for us.”

“Oh, it's prayer you want? How's this for now? . . . God, grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the serenity to accept those I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference. A prayer for Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky.”

“Does that mean we don't get to tell him that he's an idiot?"

“Let me see. Nope, there's no binding rule there that says we can't do that.”

“Okay, then. Amen.”

“Amen.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

—me strauss Letting me be

Candles in a Cathedral

Something happens to me when I walk into an old cathedral. I don’t know if it happens to everyone. I suppose it does, but I can’t tell. It’s the nature of what happens. I become one, single, away from. The space, the dim, slightly cold space, the smooth wood of the pews as I run my hand along the back of them all add to the experience. I am in a space where I am by myself with mind open, heart open, and eyes turned toward everything. looking for light.

Ever since I was small, I’ve had this feeling when I was in a church that someone was watching me. Not some villain, not some person, one who could sense my veracity. Maybe the one I’m sensing is myself wanting so to be present in a place that deserves such presence from me.

I’m always drawn to the candles. I take my time getting to them, getting to know the space and their place in it first. I might look and touch for an hour before I find myself before the candles. Then I might stand, watching them for minutes, long minutes longer. I notice each one individually. I try to imagine the person who set a prayer to each flame. I'm usually thinking of the people and the candles in the church where I grew up, where I first learned about lighting candles and saying prayers.

It’s rare that I don’t choose to light a candle and say a prayer, but deciding what to pray for seems such an important idea. Prayers are conversations I take seriously. Prayers can seem like asking your closest friend for what is not available. I don’t want to talk about frivolous things. I don’t want to speak of things that aren’t truly me either. Yet the things that pull on me seem so small when I stand inside a 200-year-old cathedral. Only the candles seem the same as me.

And prayers can feel like so many wishes . . .

Standing, staring, still. I surrender. The silence and the flicker are enough to soothe me.

I take the long slender stick and light it from a candle already aflame. I use that fire to light my own. The act itself makes me think of people. I watch the wick take the flame. I watch without moving, without blinking, unaware if anyone sees me.

I pray that I always might be surrounded by candles in a cathedral.

—me strauss Letting me be

Secret Garden in Tuscany

That afternoon I took the car and went exploring out into the country. I think a place has a way of fitting or not fitting—like clothes, or shoes, or a silence with another person. It’s got something to do with the proportion of sky to land—the view, the warmth. Some places seem to fit just right. They match my sense of space. This was one. I fit the terrain and it fit me.

I drove for over an hour without seeing another car, another person, or any kind of machine. I didn’t mind. It made me feel even more like I was in my own world. I had this smiling sort of music fantasy playing. It was The Three Tenors singing on CD. I directed them until I switched to Peter Gabriel’s Secret Garden in Italy. Then I welcomed an old friend.

“Prego.” I remember thinking as I put the CD in.

“Buona Sera” Peter Gabriel started.

I was with my music and within my world.

I drove and drove, swimming down the road in music. Slowly driving I was taking everything in. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew that I would get there. I knew for sure I’d know it too—when I got there—the same way I know my own feet, the same way I know when the sun comes up. I’d know that I was where I should be.

And when I got there.

There I was.

I pulled the car over off the blacktop. Got out and walked across the road. Sat down on the softest grass and looked upon the world’s Secret Garden. It went from where I sat to someplace past infinity—past and back. It went from where the ground begins to where the sky comes gently down. I was sitting on top of a planet. Finally I understood how Christopher Columbus could cross a fierce and mighty ocean in three tiny wooden ships because he believed the world was round.

Everything was green and growing. It was all alive and open. A path right down the center seemed to go all the way to heaven. It was as if all that I loved was in each leaf, each blade of grass, each shade of green. The air was fresh. The sky was clear. I felt peaceful. I felt brand new.

I stretched forward, front to the ground like a kid watching TV on the living room floor. My hands came up together under my chin. My elbows in the grass supported them. My knees bent. My feet were up in the air, crossed at the ankles. I looked down the hill at my finest feelings and my dearest memories. I looked at my life and realized I liked what I saw.

Nothing could be taken from me because everything I love is free.

—me strauss Letting me be

The Kitchen Shop

Imagine that. Every morning at sun up, the woman, Liza, and her son, Luca, who own The Kitchen Shop, put out their wares. I watched them do it. What luck it was that I was walking past at just the right moment. Maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe something drew me there.

Either way, these two of Tuscany didn’t seem to mind or even seem to notice this tall American blonde who pulled up some grass in front of the court house—I think it was a court house—across the road. They carried out each copper pot and hung it in its place, stopping to shine those they felt that needed it. A touch of care that was. That was a touch of love they added to a work of art they made each morning as the colors of the Tuscan sky went from dark blue to violet to pink to blue again.

I was struck by how I saw no rush. No worries seemed to drive them. They had no need to finish before an appointed time. It was more like ballet than like a drill team. Mother and son were making something beautiful because it was theirs—their life, their work, their way of being. I can’t explain how it felt to watch them. It was the calm and open feeling I get when I’m inside an old European cathedral. If I could hold it in my hands, I would have named it pride of ownership . . . respect . . . and hope . . . the hope that comes from knowing that life isn’t meant to hurt you.

The boy, tall and lean, not more than seventeen, straight hair so black, it shined almost blue to match his eyes, worked with a smile. He helped his mother carry things. He held her arm as they walked together. I thought how many hearts that boy's smile steal. His mother’s blue eyes looked at him from under wisps of black hair that had fallen forward. She watched him work as if she knew exactly what I had been thinking, yet she smiled too. She moved me with her feelings for him. They seemed to make the copper pots shine in the rising sunlight.

This was no busy city. It wasn’t a tourist town. I wondered how this little store could survive here. Where would its customers come from? Yet as I got up off the grass to go into The Kitchen Shop, I knew the customers would come. Just as I had come this morning. I walked into the open door. It was as if a magnet pulled me.

“Prego.”

Welcome. Come in. You belong here. Glad to see you. Aren’t you joyful that we’re living?

Sheer belief in the goodness of life is a powerful thing.

—me strauss Letting me be