a few of my favorite things

The orchid was a gift from my Hawaiian student this past spring. I told her I hope I don't kill it, as I have a bit of a brown thumb. Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoy plants, especially flowers. I just don't do very well at keeping them alive. This orchid was given to me the first week of May and still had blooms at the beginning of this month. Yeah!!!
The pinwheel is from Jekyll Island and has already received its fair share of space on my beach.
The view is from my office window. Oops, let me rephrase that! From my former office window. I guess I'll be holding office hours in the department's conference room this semester. Oh, well, that's not how I would have planned it, but that is how it's going to be.
The lower printout on the cabinet door is of the animated character created for the chemical element, Tungsten. The chemical symbol is derived from the name of the source of the element, a mineral known as Wolfram. That, alone, makes it one of my favorite elements. Wolfram. Nice!
The other printout is the schedule at the Fine Arts center on campus. Gotta get your cultural fix, you know? Balance is one of the keys to life. Work hard, play hard, rest hard.
Balance.

in the air today

My errands this morning included a visit to the cemetary.
In fact, that was my first errand today.
I had a new gift for Mama.
A new pinwheel.
Hers was not the same as mine, shown above. Its spinning petals were alternating dark orange and glittery fuchsia. Quite lovely! I know she would have liked it.
I like to have a pinwheel at her grave. I like to believe that her bit of energy is sufficient to muster the wind and propel the lightweight plastic vanes. Especially if I have made sure the vanes can easily turn on their central peg.
Which, of course, I did.
Before I even purchased the pinwheel, and three others, at a little shop oceanside at Jekyll Island, late on friday afternoon.
I had seen the wind vanes posted on the railing outside the shop, fanciful creatures and fluttery birds. Twice they had dragged at my attention as I explored the area, in search of Island Treasures. On the third pass, I went in and immediately espied the pinwheels, perched in a bucket on the top shelf, glinting in the fluorescent lights. Nice! I hadn't seen any pinwheels in ages!
And the shop had so many different color combinations for the toys! I selected the above for me, as it speaks "ocean" to me, then I selected a fuchsia and gold one - originally intended for Mama -, the dark orange and fuchsia, and a dark orange and blue (Go Gators!) for my first niece's 4-year-old boy. Her 5-year-old girl was to receive the dark orange and fuchsia, but this morning, while testing them for spin ease, I decided the girl would get the fuchsia and gold, as its spin quality was close to that of the dark orange and blue, but not quite as smooth as that of the dark orange and fuchsia.
And off I went to run my errands, including the placement of the toy of the breeze at my mother's grave.
When she first died, I kept a pinwheel there all the time. I could imagine her talking to me as I leaned on the family marker and cried at the sky. The bright pinwheel made me feel she was not so very far away, not if she were there twirling it for me.
As the pinwheel set in the elements would age and look tattered, I would replace it with a fresh one, sometimes mindful of the time of year. A green and white one for St. Patrick's Day. A patriotic red, white, and blue for the 4th of July. But mostly, bright colors.
I hadn't had any luck locating pinwheels for some time. Of course, I don't really enjoy shopping, so it's not like I was running around town, actively looking for them.
No, not quite.
Still, I hadn't seen any for a while and there had not been one at the grave for a while, either. Perhaps even for more than a year.
Flowers, of course.
And the flat stones on her gravestone, one for each of us kids, with each stone picked up and the sand below it removed before replacing it along the right-hand side of her name.
No, she wasn't Jewish, but she had been quite taken with the practice of leaving a stone at a grave to show that someone had visited.
So, anyway, there I was, a fresh, bright, sparkly pinwheel in my hand. After several false starts, I found the best site for its wand, a site which would allow it to catch any stray breaths of air near the ground.
And the pinwheel spun!
And as I raised my gaze skyward, the clear blue sky held a message for me: LoVe. A puffy, rectangular grouping of alternating uppercase block letters and lowercase italicized letters, wafting right above me as I stood by Mama's grave.
I stood there in shock, watching as it fluttered above me, intact and legible.
Within ninety seconds, the message was gone, dissipated into the air from whence it had formed.
I turned toward my car, thinking of my camera, too late to be useful... and saw, moving straight toward me, a huge, shifting, patchwork heart. I could almost hear it beating. The blobs of white forming the heart danced and shifted, danced and shifted, and would have shimmered if the clouds had found that possible.
Then it faded away in all directions, the pieces no longer able to form a cohesive shape.
I found that I was crying and didn't even know when that had started.
I walked to my car and sat down in the driver's seat and just sobbed.
After some passage of time, I decided I needed to be near the water, so I drove over to the little dock and parked. I sat on the wooden bench, in the sun, listening to the river and the wind in the oaks and the muted sound of traffic across the marsh... regaining my place in this world.
My errand to place a pinwheel had taken an hour.

I miss my mother.
Still.
Always.