Gray Seeds

 Calendula, 

                                                In all its glory.

Right?

Well, I guess you had to be there.

By "there," I mean "a balmy afternoon, exactly one year ago." So recently returned from a two month trip to Mexico that my tongue was still burning, I was happily back at work. 

By "work," I mean "hanging out with my homegirl, my partner in crime, my charge, and my best teacher." We were at her house, for afternoon homeschooling. 

By "afternoon homeschooling," I mean "hand-in-hand strolling, rolling, digging, picking, plucking, reading, ringing, singing, and sleeping." 

Life was nice. She leaned back in an adirondack, smiling as she watched me pick anything that looked like that photo above, from the calendula growing in her garden. The breeze was not like the wind usually gets around here in the afternoon. It was soft, just enough to cool us off and rustle the leaves of the maple trees towering over us. Her smile gave my heart a leap of joy, so I started singing a song I sang to her on our first first day of school.

Ha llegado ya el momento, de decir muy bien las cosas...

She smiled more. Uh oh.

Esto que me esta pasando, no es normal ni cualquier cosa.

 As I picked what once were bright blooms, and dropped dried seeds into a zip-loc, singing to her, smiling at me, I thought, "What beauty this life holds." 

 I didn't think, "How sad. Those flowers are dead." or "How sad. She is dying." 

Those were things I knew, but did not need to look at, at exactly that moment. That beautiful moment occurred like so many beautiful moments with her: accidental, and completely wonderful, for that suspended second the mind enjoys before it remembers to feel sad about probably having to say good-bye to her far too soon. 

 Eventually, I grew to expand that moment into whole school days. That was one of them. 

September, 2019. I'd say I thought we were going to spend our last school year together, before I started student teaching in September 2020. But when you hang with my homie, you don't really think like that. You don't take the future for granted, at all. It's as present as the petals in that photo. What future?

Still, I know that as she chillaxed in that lawn chair, grinning at me like we were about to go rob a bank, I let myself luxuriate in September. Why, it's just sunflowers time! Pumpkins next month! Woo! I love fall! And you! And school! And you! And CALENDULAS! AND YOU!

Just the bright things. Just the pretty things. Just the song. Just your smile.

Just the seeds: dead, dry, still, for now. But, next year...right? Won't there always be next year?

Yeah, I know, I've seen my friends in seeds before. Now that I write about it, I realize it's the same two friends who are connected to these calendula seeds. In their original school garden, grown by Shelly Bowe, they grew orange, almost coral. Here, in Anni's garden, their recessive yellow tones danced to the front of the flower company. In my garden, where the seeds I sang over and gathered last year were planted this year, they bloomed in both colors, and everything in between. 

This year, bound to stay in the USA all summer, I have been harvesting the abundantly colorful calendula blossoms, dehydrating them to bright crispy blobs that I've been stuffing in a mason jar. Hopefully, there will be enough of me, and enough of my time, to figure out infusing them and making a balm, putting to good use the rumored soothing properties of this humble sweet relative of marigolds or daisies (depending on which website you read.)

I think I could use something soothing this fall; though I do adore autumn, am thrilled to be a new teacher, and of course, I still hang with my homie just for kicks, on the regular. She is still smiling, and I still sing to her. Those beautiful moments are as beautiful as ever. I am more grateful for them than ever.

Still, as I embark on my first September at school without her, my new classroom blurs before me. Tears fill my vision and my face buckles under my mask. This moment between bright colors offers a different view, one that hurts, but I will not look away from it. 

There is value in the lessons learned, but spinning to the sunny side of things can be a dangerous compulsion. Losing her will hurt more, later, but this moment now needs its own appreciation. 

She is dying, and I am so sad about that. No school year exploits to plan for us make the finality of it stare back at me like gray seeds.

The calendula bobs in this year's September breeze, just as gently as ever. Their sunshine hues do not need to comfort me. Their light, curled seeds don't need to soothe me with a promise of next year's colorful show. Who knows who among us will be there to enjoy that? No, today was enough. The seeds, like today's smiles and today's song, are enough. They are everything.

Keeping the Code

Check her out. A beauty, ain’t she?

Though we don’t crank that handle nearly often enough, our living room has been a more beautiful place thanks to the presence of this death-defying time machine. Oh? Just looks like a no-tech antique to you? Well, turn the handle and set a needle in the grooves of one of these babies, and you’ve got yourself a room full of people from the past, their voices and talent captured in one magical moment, for which they practiced all their lives. Their bodies are soil but their love, their passion, is ours forever.

Except, we are not forever. We are soil-bound too.

The more I live through that reality, and face what it means, the more my mind’s eye is drawn to those things about us that remain with others, which are passed on, and reverberate after our exit from this mortal stage.

A good friend died yesterday. This is where I am supposed to talk about her in the past tense. She was this, she was that, but some people live with a force that outlasts them in my mind. She still is more brilliant, beautiful, unique, and fun than any words can describe. She brought those things to every interaction with such force, they could never vanish as easily as a human body succumbs to aggressive cancer.

Death makes me stubborn, it turns out. I feel determined not to let go, to crank the handle and listen to the breath and lightning fast fingers of ghosts, and delight in the fact that their song got another printing, in my head and heart.

There is something, for our intents and purposes, that is permanent. A code. We pass it along, for better or worse, to everyone around us, some of whom will outlive us. Like an analog data storage spiral of notches and grooves pressed into fresh vinyl. The code lives on and on and on.

When someone I love dies, my thoughts search for their influence on the code of my life. The parts of them that live on in me, and which I hope to leave with the impressionable around me.

With Julie, I don’t have to look far. The Backyard University ethos comes from basic tenets I learned in the same years I became friends with her. Notions like being adventurous, driven, inclusive, kind to animals and people, willing to embrace the edges that come with looking at all of life’s jagged sparkly beauty and ugliness: these have been important to me over the same period of time I have been friends with her.  Either I learned it from her, or felt reinforced by how well she embodied those values. One way or the other, that is her code in me. It’s what she made that I can carry and pass on.

If you get to live many years, you will say many good-byes, some of which will leave your heart a little broken forever. Here’s what is unexpected: you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You wouldn’t trade that rough lace for a smooth uninterrupted heart that was never impressed upon; not in a million years. You find a needle to play those rifts and crags left behind by the love and loss, a way to sing to the beautiful pattern dug into you.

You might find it is your favorite song.