Winter Morning

    I awoke early this morning.  Sleep is not my friend these days; even on weekends my days start well before dawn.  At this point it no longer troubles me, and I have come to enjoy the extra time to reflect on all that has led me here and where I may be going.  It seems that the troubled times have now become opportunities.

    Joe, a small, terrior mutt and my near-constant companion, is finally awake and eager to get out to the yard.  He has not yet become accustomed to my new odd hours, and lies sleeping on my bed most mornings long after I've started my day.  It is one of the few times he is not at my side.  Always in a frenzy, he is now bouncing at both me and the door.  Grinning as only a dog can, his wagging impulse begins at his ears and travels with exuberance to the tip of his raggedy tail.  He twirls in circles as I reach to open the door, and is unable to choose between greeting me and getting outside to relieve himself.  I often make that decision for him by scooting him out the door, closing it quickly behind him.  Today is no different.  I gently, but firmly, push him out into the latest of winter's onslaught.  A hard, cold mix of rain and snow is falling.

    The house is new to me, purchased last year in the earliest days of spring.  It has yet to feel like home.  It seems like a very long time since I've felt at home anywhere.  For now, it is comforting to be here in a safe, secure, reasonably comfortable place of my own.  Homes are made of memories, I tell myself, and those will come with time.  I stand at the door looking out at the frozen yard which will be my garden, perhaps my last.  As usual, thoughts of all that I planted this past spring and summer come to mind.  All now sleeping under that thin layer of snow with its egg-shell cap of ice.  My garden has always been a big part of who I am.  Gardening is what I do.  Even in the middle of winter, I find myself imagining and planning what will one day be.  My concern this morning is that which may not survive to return next Spring.  It is my childhood, my loved ones, my history that sleeps out there under the thinnest of blankets, weathering the cruelest of winters we have seen in some time.  I shiver at the thought. 

    I planted ancestors of the wild violets from my childhood under the dying dogwood tree by the front walkway.  Memories come to me of violets, nearly strangled by my dirty little fists each Spring, offered to my mother with love.  I recall her behaving as if she cherished them.  I now find myself chuckling as I remember, and am startled at permitting these memories at all.  I haven't been able to allow myself the pleasure of memories until this moment.  I feel the comfort of her voice as she admitted to me that she never cared for violets much at all, a twinkle in her eye as she spoke.  "That was so long ago," I hear myself mutter in amazement, "Where did the time go?"  Her admission came long after those violets were a shared memory and only when I'd become a woman myself.  I love those sweet little blue/purple posies.  A friend recently spoke of her wish for a lawn of nothing but violets.  What a lovely thought.  Just imagining it brings a brief smile to my face on this blustery morning. 

    I rest my head against the cold sliding glass door as I stare out into the "wintry mix".  The weatherman's description of this morning's forecast.  Too poetic for today's gift from Mother Nature, I think.  The cold glass is numbing me.  First only my head, but I feel the numbness spreading through me as I stand here.  Numb is good.  I realize how tired I am of feeling. 

    Out there are oof-spring of the fern, trillium, mayapples and odd looking 'jack-in-the-pulpit' Mama and I transplanted from the woods each year during my early childhood.  The tiny tea roses I planted a few years before Mama's death were carefully transplanted from the miniature rose garden I'd made for her to the garden of the last house and then again to my last garden,  here.  Now they lie covered with iced mulch next to the tall, sweet flox, the beebalm and cleome that surrounded the tiny gold fish pond I'd dug for her.  Others came from the gardens of women I wish to honor - my mother's sister and the woman who raised the one I once loved.  I honor both still.  Hopefully, all these tiny living memories still wait.  Seeds from Mama's angel trumpets, 'johnny-jump-ups', lupines and foxglove were strewn about this past Fall and are waiting, too.  I took only a few starts or seeds of each to remind me of who I once was, where I am from and what I can do.  The rest were left for others to enjoy.  A bit of me remains everywhere I've lived.  They are reminders of me...cairns that mark the way I came.
   
      I left most of my life behind to come here.  Much was lost before I left.  What little remained had either been destroyed or was abandoned in my frantic efforts to continue on.  Many of my recollections of my former life are painful or simply illusion, so I refuse to think of that time.  The plants in my garden must hold the memories of 26 odd years for me, along with those of my mother and my childhood.  Only small traces of my past remain in the darkest corners of my mind.  The rest of me is usually free of those times now.  But for the occasional flurry of melancholy dust blown from those corners, I've provided a clean slate for my future.  For now, my memories are yet to be made, and I suppose I will make them here.  Perhaps someday, I will allow a place in my head and heart for the memory of what came before, but not yet.  Not today. 

    What a burden for such delicate things.  I am struck at the thought that I have little 'baggage' from all that has happened these last few years.  I set it down when it became too cumbersome.  My baggage lies sleeping in the cold with my flowers.  It will remain there, to be surrounded by beauty in the Spring.  I will retrieve those memories only when they are no longer volatile...once time has cushioned their impact on my heart.  My garden will hold them until I can do so myself.

    Joe-Joe is back at the door, whining and barking to come in with his feet too cold to paw at the door.  So deep in thought, I've been leaning all the while against the glass.  I wonder how long he's been pleading with me to open the door?  As I dry Joe's frosty feet, I notice my equally frosty forehead is now becoming very warm and tingly.  I hope that is how I will one day feel when I'm willing to recall events from my past life.  Those memories may yet comfort me...or at least make me laugh at the irony of it all.  Until then, best to let the past sleep where it can do no harm, and let my garden's beauty balance the sadness and cruelty in it.  As my garden waits for Spring, my memories wait for me.  I haven't the strength for them just yet.