Fragments
After days of heat, a sharp chill has returned, reminder of shorter days and the darkness already beginning to lay claim to waking as well as sleeping hours. It is a time to contemplate, make hearty soups, bring out wool sweaters, and remember.
Seamus Heaney died this week. The two times I met him, he was gracious and powerful, a quiet presence. A outpouring of grief flooded blogs, social media, classrooms, and households. This loss, like the losses of those who touch us in some way, is palpable and permanent.
Perhaps it is the seasonal change or death; lately I’ve been thinking about how little we know about some of the people in our lives. We invent familiarity from fragments in much the same way that we might write a poem from a memory of the sky at dusk or use a photograph to paint a portrait. I wrote a story from a painting by Robert Sparrow Jones. We assume strength, carelessness, or disdain because of facial expression, posture, misunderstood words. The intricacies of humanity remain mostly hidden, except to a few. This happens in workplaces, relationships, emails and texts. Sometimes we are cartoon figures filling in dialogue bubbles for other cartoon figures. The actual dialogue might look different without our filters.
It does not show on my face that I have moved my mother three times in the past nine years, spent two and a half months sorting through the possessions of her life and mailed boxes to anyone I thought would want her memorabilia. I keep a plush yellow ball in my briefcase that I can toss to my college students because surprise matters in teaching. My characters are unlike anyone I know; a widower preyed upon by a young girl, an obsessive compulsive conservationist, a woman with a twenty-year-old secret. I am the youngest of three daughters. My father died while I was in Italy, and they elected Pope Benedict. Now there is a new pope, Pope Francis.
From my porch, I heard a fisher weasel’s shriek last Saturday. Barred owls call frequently. In an article about the recovery of forests in the northeast, it said that black bears have returned in numbers large enough to accelerate the chances of an encounter. I know for certain that it will grow colder in the upcoming months. I don’t know what he’s thinking or feeling and I’d like to tell her that I’m trying to understand the complexities of communication. Sorrow, joy, and fear are universal languages. When I waved from the car the other day, it was because I saw something in the tilt of a head or the shape of a face. We are driving on the same road, not always in the same direction. The light will grow scarcer. My characters don’t always choose wisely and I can’t prevent them from falling. Come inside when the temperature drops. There will be soup and conversation.
Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor 
Nice. Check out ctmountainlion.org. I’ll never forget seeing a mountain lion in East Hampton on Rte 439/Hurd State Park. That was almost 20 years ago. My son-in-law told me he was talking to a guy who saw a mountain lion in the woods across the street from me (where I saw pileated woodpeckers in CT for the first time). I don’t know about the veracity of this account, but it is a bit unnerving. I don’t think my fenced in yard would bother a cougar one bit.
On walks a couple weeks back, I saw a coyote in the berry bushes under the power lines on three straight days. (Remember the family we saw at Bluff Point?) (I guess wolves like berries too.) And my sister told me that her hairdresser saw a black bear under the power lines in Waterford.
They say carnivores stalk the old and feeble: my days are numbered.
I have never (and will never) consider you old or feeble. Nimble and imaginative is more like it!
Aww. I love you too.