I remember many smells of early summer when I was growing up at my parents' house, but one in particular that I always associated with my neighbor's pool. I remember sitting in the window in the upstairs bedroom because from there I could look past the hedges dividing our yards and down on that pool and its promises of being included in the neighborhood play, enveloped in its coolness and its coolness, and breathing in that smell. It was a sweet smell and just screamed summer.
Later, after having my own home and my own hedges, I learned that the smell was not the pool but the variety of privet hedges we have growing in the neighborhood. Funny, that.
Those hedges were annoying to me when we first moved in to our grown up house. Unruly, needing to be trimmed more often than I judged appropriate for such hedges, taking up valuable snow-dumping space when I shoveled in the winter, being too tall. But Dee next door loved them, so we kept them. She used to insist on doing most of the upkeep herself, but now that job has fallen to me and I honestly enjoy getting out the hedge trimmer, climbing up on the ladder, and getting sunburned a few times each summer. I like waging war against the tangle at the top of the hedgerow, and the deep pruning I do about every other year that leaves them looking kind of scraggy for a while but reliably ends up with healthier, prettier plants.
But best of all, I like when the hedges bloom and fill our yard with that sweet summer smell. All those promises of hope and fun and inclusion and sweet, sweet coolness come flooding back. And now, with my gardener's eyes, I'm more attuned to the miniature trumpets of each branch crying "summer! summer!" and the delicate droop of the buds before they open. I like to see them after the rain and how each branch seems to respond differently to the water. And the way the boughs cascade over each other differently under the weight of all those tiny blooms. Once the flowering tapers off, I'll mount that ladder again and tame those bushes into a quieter, less fragrant submission. But for now, I enjoy their wilder, more organic form, the stray arms reaching skyward, and each sweet breath I savor in the driveway.
In other life observations, I'm noticing something happening to me more and more often when I am out shopping alone: other women, strangers to me, approach me for advice and opinions. To be quite clear, I am usually out and about looking rather homeless and harried, a fist fulla coupons and a serious thinking face as I calculate discounts and add up totals in my head, sizing up impulse purchases against savings and so on.
And yet, a few weeks ago a younger-than-me woman approached me for help writing out the inside of a wedding card for a dear friend while her gift was being wrapped. Another woman turned to me for assistance in picking out candy in line (you'd think this was a momentous decision the way she weighed and pondered chocolate versus sour patch kids). Today, a lady came up to me in the pajama section of Target asking about those trendy soft pants and whether you could wear something out and about if you bought it in the sleepwear sections and we had a nice little chat. Afterwards, I was baffled that in my headscarf and flipflops anyone would come to me for a second opinion about fashion. But yeah. This kind of thing is happening to me more frequently and I'm not sure why, but it's enough to be a noticeable pattern. I take this as some kind of compliment from the universe at large -- or at least acknowledge that there's something about the way I carry myself that makes me seem approachable and ... a little wiser, perhaps, than the next guy on the street. Maybe that's reading too much into things, but it feels like affirmation and I'm going to take it.
Finally, in terms of healing, I am learning how important framing is. My first year teaching, I turned to one of the guidance counselors at the school for, well, guidance. She helped me understand student misbehavior and how to talk to kids about ways they were acting out. She helped me adjust my own thinking about some of the things that went on in that school. One term she used often was "reframing." That if you can just reframe a problem and see it in a different, fuller context, you can often react more wisely, understand it more fully, deal with it more compassionately, and more forward more better-ish-ly-ful. English teacher. Yep.
So I've been trying to put that to practice in my own life, especially as recent situations have been so hard to get my heart around and to face fully. In my work with my own counselor, I recognize that often what she does is hand me some of the tools for doing this reframing on my own: a little suggestion here, an observation there. She plants seeds and they grow in my heart and mind as the two work together like sun and soil to germinate some understanding, compassion, and fullness in me. I remember to do this on my own as well, and the more I do it, the easier it is for me to face adversity with grace. The pain is still there, but the understanding of why things are happening they way they do, the reframing, helps me face things more calmly. It's like how you feel more steady walking when you can see than when your eyes are closed. Either way, you know how to walk, but one feels much better than the other.
I need to remember this as I continue to work on my marriage, my life, my family (nuclear, of origin, and constructed). Learning more about the human heart and the human mind helps, too. I do so enjoy this digging into myself and the world around me. It's as if digging tangibly in the earth itself isn't enough, so I must dig with my mind. I must dig with my emotions. I must mine all the world around me -- which, I am learning, kind of isolates me sometimes (a lot of the time) because not everyone likes dirt under their nails like I do-- but it's okay, because you know what? There are so many treasures I'm unearthing. Precious, semi-precious, and fool's gold alike, but all are delightful, and each discovery helps me feel more in communion with the earth I'm planted on and with the One who created it.
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