On letting it go
time for a week off
The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now
It’s Saturday morning and I’m drinking coffee in bed. “I don’t know why I indulge you like this,” says Janyce. She has just handed me a new cup of coffee.
“Don’t use that cup,” I said only moments ago. “I don’t like the smell. I need a new cup.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this cup,” she said on her way out of the room.
Now I hear the vacuum cleaner in the kitchen as I slowly sip the coffee. The perfect velvety cup of morning coffee.
“I added two scoops of the Jim’s beans to the low acid,” she says. “Ah hah! good, right?” Janyce is back in the room now, the white noise silenced and replaced by the chirping birds outside. She is staring down at her cell phone.
“I think this is our highest electric bill ever,” she says. “Another fallout from both of us working from home.”
“In a matter of weeks, we’ll turn off the air. And this winter we’ll use the wood stove instead of turning on the heat,” I say, in a rare moment of morning magnanimity.
Today is the first full day of a vacation week for the two of us. But since we’re not actually leaving the house until tomorrow to enjoy an unplugged cabin by a lake for a handful of days, there’s still much to do— groceries, dog boarding, bill paying, rounding up of chairs and coolers, bug spray and books. Loads of books.
Last night at 3am I woke up as usual and did a little walk around the house, looking for a distraction that wasn’t me holding one ear bud to my ear while lying in bed listening fretfully to the news. It’s time for letting it go— even blog writing— for one precious week. I finally settled on reading a collection of poems on the living room couch from The Atlantic to ease me back into falling asleep again.
I look up now from my cup and watch our old dog as he sleeps on the bed at my feet. He’s too old now to go with us, the drive in the car too far, the new surroundings too upsetting while we are gone for a hike in the middle of the day. We hate to leave him even for a second, because we know he will be leaving us soon and we’ll have no other choice but to let him go. With that in mind, I leave you with a favorite poem of mine from Mary Oliver this morning. “Saturday Morning with Janyce” will be back next week.
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.