Tea With Emerson

            

Ralph Waldo Emerson very kindly accepts my invitation for a cup of tea each morning around 8:30.  He sits across from me at the island in our kitchen looking distinguished in his black suit and matching cravat, which barely covers the top button of his neatly pressed white shirt.  His penetrating eyes, framed by dark brows, search my face wondering what I have gleaned from today’s meditation. 

“I read it twice,” I say.  “But I’m not sure I totally understand the part about….,” and the discussion begins, in my head and the pages of my journal. But unfortunately, not in the presence of the man himself. I’m 128 years too late.

His serious expression faces me from the cover of my copy of Meditations of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Into the Green Future, which lies beside my teacup and half-eaten piece of toast.  I bought the book earlier this year when my friend, Marian, and I visited Concord, Massachusetts, where Emerson lived for close to 50 years.  Reading one of his mediations has been part of my morning routine since I returned to Greenbrier a month ago.  With our house surrounded by acres of nature, I wanted to think more deeply about Emerson’s larger view of Nature, how it touched and shaped his life and beliefs.

If Mr. Emerson were to join me, I am confident that he would say, “Let’s take our cups of tea outside and sit on your front porch or wander among your trees,” reminiscent of times he spent with his contemporaries wandering the meadows, rivers, trails, hillsides or pond called Walden.

“Yesterday afternoon I went to the Cliff with Henry Thoreau.  Warm, pleasant, misty weather, which the great mountain amphitheatre seemed to drink in with gladness.  A bird’s voice, even a piping frog enlivens a solitude and makes world enough for us.”

-       Meditation # 17, World Enough for Us

Just think of it! Emerson and Thoreau sitting together on a cliff. Do you wonder whether Henry knocked on the Emersons' door, or perhaps walked right in and said, "Morning, Ralph, want to take a walk?” 

Marian and I climbed not a cliff, but a ridge, Author’s Ridge, on a frosty morning in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Enveloped in February grayness and swirling snowflakes, we were the lone visitors searching for the graves of these famous friends and their equally renowned neighbors.  Bare branches, aging gravestones and a feeling that the Headless Horseman (though not really associated with this Sleepy Hollow) was lurking close by on his velvet black horse, gave our quest a slightly spooky quality.  That feeling was soon replaced, however by a sense of awe as I stood among a community of authors whose words have so often translated into emotions, actions and inspiration in my life.  Walking by the names, “Henry D. Thoreau,” “L.M.A.” (Louise May Alcott), “Hawthorne,” and finally “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” I marveled at the fact that persons possessing such insightful and far-reaching thinking shared everyday lives, down the street, across town, or beside a pond from each other.

“Today’s meditation, what are you thoughts?”  Mr. Emerson asks in a tone resembling a teacher who has discovered his student daydreaming in class.  I reread it. . .  

“. . .[I] found a sunny hollow where the east wind would not blow, and lay down against the side of a tree to most happy beholdings.  At least I opened my eyes and let what would pass through them into the soul.”

-Meditation #2, The Noble Earth

I open my journal to start a reflection, as if dutifully beginning a writing assignment, but just as quickly close it.  Heading out the front door into a couple of acres of oak trees, I reply to Mr. Emerson’s question,  “Excuse me, sir, while I find a comfortable spot beside a tree.”    

Snake Sighting

If I were President of the United States and had been whisked away when my secret service agents were taking a coffee break, my kidnappers would only need to know one thing to make me talk.  Since the possibility is zero that I will ever occupy the White House and have access to anything as important as security codes or the key to the presidential china cabinets, I feel secure in giving away the secret.  It’s snakes.  I am totally terrified of them! It makes no difference whether they are poisonous or non-poisonous, long or short (although there’s more to be frightened of the longer they are), colorful or bland, silent or rattly.  They create an equal amount of adrenaline-rushing fear that causes me to run, scream, fling my hands in the air. . . in short, transform a calm, genteel woman into a crazed, out-of-control lunatic!

Where did this off-the-radar phobia come from, you may wonder?  Ask my children.  Whenever I begin my “snake story,” they shake their heads and say, “Yes, Mom, you’ve told us this before,” in the same tone I used with my grandfather when he repeated one of his “when I was growing up” stories for the 35^th time. (So, if they’re reading this posting, I advise them to skip the next paragraph.)

Once upon a time, when I was at the impressionable age of four, my mother and I were taking a bag of trash to a barrel across the yard.  Venturing away from my mother’s path, I stepped over a long, fat, brown stick, which as you’ve probably guessed, was no stick.  No sooner had I said, “Hey, Mom, look at this cool stick,” than she scooped me up and dashed back to the house.  My grandmother, visiting from her farm, grabbed a hoe, strode out to where the stick lay, and proceeded to whack it and whack it and whack it.  The sight of that wiry woman, in her shirt-waist dress, raising the hoe handle high in the air and bringing it down with such determined force on the contorting snake, is etched forever in my memory.  Not only did she kill it, but hooked it over the end of the hoe, then hung it (or what was left of it) on the fence. What a woman!

When we first moved into our house in Greenbrier, surrounded by 5 acres of woods and snaky-looking underbrush, I went to the local farm supply store and bought a container of Snake-A-Way, granules that snakes supposedly don’t like and won’t cross.  I was prepared to sprinkle it around the perimeter of our house, when our son-in-law, Ben, astutely pointed out that snakes might already be positioned within that perimeter.  Did I really want to take the chance of discouraging them from leaving?  Mumbling about the accuracy of his logic, I goggled other possibilities, then decided on the least scientific solution of the bunch. . . Boots!  Black, up-to-my knees, thick-soled, rubber boots.  And slow, deliberate steps while scanning right, left, ahead for anything that resembles the long, slender, coiled or curvy body of the dreaded creatures.

Having gotten wind of the fact that there’s a snake-hating woman living in our house, who goes crazy at the sight of one of their kin, snakes have chosen to stay away. . . until last Thursday afternoon. I was sitting peacefully on the window seat, looking out the upstairs window of the study, composing a perfect sentence for my memoir, when I noticed a stick - a long, black, shiny stick - lying in the grass below.  Suddenly the stick disappeared, then reappeared a short distance away, slithering slowly from the edge of the flowerbed across a patch of dirt, to the bird fountain, through the hostas plants, into taller grass, then out of sight in the snaky underbrush at the edge of the manicured lawn.  With a window, screen, roof, porch, steps and another 50 feet or so separating us, I was able to hold off the craziness and stand, instead, holding my breath, unable to move. 

 Knowing that he’s out there somewhere, maybe with a few of his buddies, all I can say is that he’d better keep his distance or I might grab my hoe.  Who am I kidding?!!        

The "T" Word

 As a young lady growing up in the prim and proper South, there were certain words I was never allowed to say, specifically the “S” word, “D” word, and “F word.”  (Which come to think of it, even now, I gag when these words attempt to wiggle their way up my throat and cross my lips.)  As an adult, I’ve added another word to the list.  What is this cursed word, you ask?  It’s the “T” word – TRANSITION.  No, it doesn’t exactly fit in the category of profanity, but certainly makes me want to swear each time I experience it.

Having transitioned from Moscow to Greenbrier just last week, in a long line of transitions over the past 23 years - from Arkansas to Barrow, Alaska, to Juneau, Alaska, to Singapore, back to Juneau, then Cairo, Egypt, and on to Moscow – I’ve determined that TRANSITION is my least favorite word in the English, or any other, language.

Sometimes I think it’s the speed with which the change occurs that makes me feel like E.T., who was suddenly uprooted when his space ship lifted off without him, leaving him lost, confused and living off Reese’s Pieces, looking for anything that reminded him of Home.  Maybe in the day of long ocean crossings, when there were endless hours of gazing at the horizon, lounging on deck chairs, letting go of one life and preparing for another, transitions were more manageable, more humane.  The day we left Arkansas for Alaska for the first time, it was 99 degrees on a hot August morning.  We stepped off the plane in Barrow, the northern-most town in the United States, 17 hours and 4150 miles later to a chilly 32 degrees and frigid blast of culture shock.   Not that I would have wanted to traverse the Brooks Range by dogsled in order to more gradually get accustomed to the Arctic, but who is prepared for that kind of monumental change in such a short time?  Not I.

I picture the “T” word as a gap, ranging in size from an easily traversed distance between stones across a shallow stream, to an abyss separating a ledge on either side.  The more life-altering the TRANSITION, the wider the gap between what was and what is, and the shakier the bridge connecting the two. (I’m talking really shaky, like one of those Indiana Jones types of bridges, where you grab onto rope handrails as rotten wood planks fall out from beneath your feet.) Of course, there are moments as I inch my way across even the widest gaps, when the view is so breathtaking that I forget about my precarious footing, when the exhilaration of the adventure propels me ahead, my hands barely touching the ropes beneath them. But then, just when I think I’ve got the hang of living with unease, I wobble, sit down and have a good cry, pull out my gratitude journal, call a friend, and gather my courage to take another step.      

Being a collector of inspirational quotes, I search my journals for words to serve as a TRANSITION mantra, to assure me that life will again even out.  I find wisdom in writings by Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic. . .

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  

Julian offers no timeline as to the length of time this process will take, no assurances that it will happen smoothly, nor does she say that “all will be the same.” Simply that all will be well.

With each calming repetition, I grow bold enough to tell the “T word” to take its baggage and “ Go to H. . .” But stopping short of another unladylike word, I instead pick up a shovel, some potting soil and head to my flowerbed, knowing that digging in the dirt helps bridge the gap to our Arkansas home.

(If any of you reading this would like to leave a comment about what helps you during times of TRANSITION, please do so.)