Unusual Beauty

This water lily stands at the edge of a pond in Middletown, Maryland, at Surreybrooke, a collection of garden rooms and nurseries. I was taken with the lily's unusual shape (though there were other water lilies, as you can see in the background here, most of the plants in the gardens were of the also-lovely and still-flowering kind). This one, along with some of the other lilies, had already begun its preparation for next season's seeds and next year's plants.

Something Real

I'm not immune to the pressures and preferences of our culture, though there has always been a part of me that rebels at them.

When I get to the crux of the matter, though, I don't think appearances matter nearly so much as we sometimes think.

At the same time, I'm a designer and artist who cares very much about how things look, and I'm meticulous about details when I need to be. It's a tension, I'll admit.

A few years ago, I wrote a letter that included what appears below. It's also something of a tribute to my grandmother, the one who has not yet been pictured here.

At my grandmother's funeral, I looked at her before they closed the casket and I had a fuller realization of something that's important to me. I have always known this, and maybe, to some extent, we all do---but it hit home with me in a very real way when I saw her.

I looked at her body there, and I knew for certain it was not her, or not what consituted the main part of her.

It is what was inside—her spirit, her soul—that was the most important part of her. It manifested itself in little things about her—how she played the piano with passion even in her 80’s, how she spoke with a sexy voice without meaning to and blushed when we teased her about it, how she fed the dog at the table even though Grandpa told her not to, how she was so gentle that birds would eat from her hand.

She was my grandmother who was a constant in my life, who stroked my head gently when I sat next to her while we watched Grandpa’s slides, who rejoiced when I learned how to read and gave me books as soon as I could ask for them.

She was my grandma who wrote poetry about trees, who would not let Grandpa record her playing because it was not “perfect” (but he did anyway on the sly), who could listen to music and nearly swoon, who had her faults. But even all this is only part of the sum of her. It is her spirit, her soul, that was, that is, her.

I have a friend who told me that she knew her first marriage was doomed when she discovered it was mostly about looks and status; I agree. Those things don't last and they don't matter nearly as much as we sometimes think. If that was what my grandparents' union had been mostly about, I doubt that it would have lasted, either.

Yes, I think we need to take care of our physical selves---I've learned that later in life. Sure, the outside matters, too.

But it's the inside that counts most. That's my opinion, anyway.

NYC, After

It's been almost six years since September 11, and the photo at left shows the site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood.

Something that struck me: the trains still travel on a track that used to be beneath the towers. I have ridden that train before.

Now, temporary shelters stand above the tracks. The steel girders that anchored the towers are still there, sticking out like uneven rows of teeth.

New York City, though, has broad shoulders. It's brash. It's bold. I know Carl Sandburg described Chicago similarly, but I think his description, or one like it, applies to NYC, too.

Maybe this is most important, given that we can't bring back the greatest treasures lost almost six years ago: it's (re)building.

Iowa Savanna

Last month, I visited my birthplace, Iowa, and I learned that Iowa's pre-agricultural land was not just prairie, but also bona fide savanna.

I usually think of savanna as a place in Africa where you'd find lions, not pigs, but I can't deny that Iowa's savanna, its grasslands punctuated by bur oaks and, this time of year, black-eyed Susans, has a beauty all its own.

I've thought this before: growing up in a place that's not the splashiest tourist attraction in the world can help you learn to see loveliness wherever you are.

And, yes, there are more pigs than people in Iowa. A story appeared in the Washington Post to this effect while I was in graduate school, and a mischievous coworker from Boston teased me unmercifully about it. I checked it out today, and it's still true that pigs come in first by a longshot: people number just under 3 million, while pigs top 15 million, according to the Iowa Pork Newsroom.