A Still Life…A Life Still

Thick trunks of shadow lie down across the lawn.  Around their bodies light stencils the grass in stripes, both dazzling and dark.  Five red leaves flap like prayer flags in the sun, blazing on bare branches, their last morning. 

Miles away, my father rises (I think now of how brave is his rising every day), and greets my brother’s family, the five of them traveling far to converge for a meal around the table.  His granddaughter’s new love will bring himself as an offering to meet the wise, ailing man she reveres, to seek his blessing, though none of that is said.  There is only the curry dinner, the prayer of thanks, the tincture of laughter. 

I am holding the day in the cup of early morning as I sit blanketed by the fire. It is stenciled in bold intensities –the eagerness of love blooming, the five last leaves of a life blazing red in the sun.  The striations searing my distant heart.

                                                                                                        –susan

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“Existence now takes on the character, we might say, of a still-life in a Cezanne. There is a table. Upon the table, a plate. Upon the plate, some apples. Nothing else. Everything is there, clear and evident. Nothing left to ask or to answer. And yet mystery everywhere. There is more in these things than meets the eye: more than the simple individuality of each thing…It might even be that the mystery is the very stuff of being; things, events, everything that happens and which we call life.”                               from “The Stages of Life and Philosophy” by Romana Guardina

T’is the season when life is not still at all. It’s hustle, hurry, hop from one commitment to another, dragging my to-do lists along like some tattered life line, hoping it will keep me sane and afloat. The older I get the more convinced I am that the Christmas miracle is not so much the virgin birth, but that the cards get out (IF we find time to take a picture, a miracle in itself), the presents get wrapped, the cheer cajoled from some deep frazzled place that says “yeah, right” re: a silent, holy night. Today began by swearing as I was speeding on my way to church (not exactly an ideal Sunday school lesson for my girls!), and ended, after way too much all-day to-and-fro, under a light, cool drizzle at the nightime Mt. Pleasant Christmas Parade, which I tried to skip but relented due to a Claire-induced guilt trip.  

“Upon the plate, some apples. Nothing else. Everything is there, clear and evident…”   The scattered, jumbled clutteredness of my life right now, exacerbated by the holidays, is a jarring juxtaposition to my mother’s. She is clearing the table, keeping it simple, savoring the well-deserved luxury–after decades of work and now only a few years into retirement– of days to sit and read all day if she wants. And yet the haunting knowlege of days to come…when, we do not know…is very much present this holiday season.  The days when it won’t be luxury but a cruel confinement to sit all day, everyday. Right now, ALS is just a specter. A ghost of Christmas future. She’s doing so well, totally mobile and energetic and beautiful, only her speech and swallowing affected by this still newly-diagnosed disease, but I’m going through the Christmas motions wondering and worrying what next Christmas will bring. I’m sure it will bring a different jumble of emotions while still retaining this same sense of harriedness, of over-kill and over-scheduling, despite my soul’s deep craving for simplicity. Despite my longing for the beauty of stillness, for mystery, and clarity. For a table. A plate. And on the plate some apples.

-stephanie

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