June 15: Gratitude of hours on the swing

I’ve taken a break these last few days, recovering from studying for my Boards on the 13th.  Many things have been neglected, and there are many things that I should be doing and really need to be done.  On this most beautiful of recent days, with a clear sky, low humidity, a few white fluffy clouds floating and the perfect amount of breeze I don’t feel like doing any of them.  I promised myself that I would get out for a walk, and on coming back from morning errands and the farmer’s market I parked my car out front with the intention of driving to one of the places that I enjoy ambling.  But, for a time, my outside enjoyment is confined to my swing.  I’m looking through my rather extensive library for a short story or reading on gratitude in preparation for the service I’m doing next month.  It is appalling how few things there are on being grateful, even in the book entitled ‘Love & Gratitude’.  There are lots of essays on asking for things, patience, experiencing the world, love, harmony, meditation.  But almost nothing on gratitude.  How can this be? 

Swinging gently, back and forth and back and forth, my body is comforted by the soothing of the regular motion.  As I put down the last of the books I’ve brought out to peruse, I look around my backyard.  My yard is not particularly special, or large, or well landscaped.  There are, however, four trees that are well established, and right around my swing are my sage plants and my glorious lavender bush that is currently in full bloom.  A white butterfly and a bee flitter around the blossoms, seemingly oblivious to each other, each getting their particular insect pleasure out of the tiny purple flowers that cluster on each stem.  The butterfly, as these creatures are known for, flits from branch to branch with no obvious change visible.  But the bee makes itself known.  Each cluster of flowers he lands on bends, he rides the motion like a tiny winged surfer on an undulating wave.  He finishes his business on one stem, then flies to another, without any seeming pattern, and once again the stem bends down from his weight. 

 

As the sun moves I have to switch sides, my swing is two seats that face each other, with a roof that protects me from too much sun, and the set-up allows me to easily move as the sun arcs across and changes directions.  Sitting on the side that I don’t use as much I look up to see a perfect spider’s web, poised between two non-moving areas and so intact.  It is an incredible work of art, although probably not very satisfactory to the spider since there is no dinner contained in its delicate pattern.  As I admire the lacy handiwork a shaft of sun comes through, lighting the strands with the colors of the rainbow.  I grab my cell phone camera and take several photos, the dance of light and colors changing dozens of times in a few seconds depending on the breeze affecting either the web or the leaves allowing the sun to cascade through.  There are actual circles caught by the camera lens which I can’t see, each a separate color which creates a collage of multi-colored beauty.  It makes me wonder if someone musically talented could perhaps play a tune from the changing light on the strands, a melody of nature that I can only guess at.  I send the picture to several people, wanting to share this moment of natural miracle.

 

 

It occurs to me that my regular camera might do even better, and I go inside, disturbing a very content Zerla who was enjoying the warm sun streaming through the screen door.  (The cats are not happy about the upgraded windows I put in a few years ago, which control the temperature beautifully, but in doing so eliminate the warmth of the sunbeams which lie on the floor, making them much less satisfying to bask in.  This limits sunning areas to those which receive light through non-upgraded windows.  It makes me feel badly to decrease their enjoyment, but with the recognition that it has lowered my fuel bills, thus decreasing my human footprint and their paw prints on the environment being a greater cause.)

 

Camera in hand I resume my prior position, but the fancy digital lens wants to focus on the tree through the web, rather than on it.  I do get several pictures of the sun on the strands, some with more vibrant hues than the cell phone took, but none with the special dancing circles of color that enchanted me so; I hope that prints from the pictures will capture those first colored dancing rainbow.  Is this a lesson that beauty does not always improve through a more expensive lens?

 

Now in photo mood I wander the small distances in between trees, capturing the Japanese maples’ delicate coloring and shape silhouetted against the sky, then trying to capture the jagged edges of the elm tree’s leaves, finding more in the pattern of the leaves than just the edges themselves.  From there I move to the holly tree, shooting up the trunk to try and capture the wonderful curving of branches that come out of the trunk, bending at odd twists and bends that are so different from the generally straight pattern of the other trees.  While the butterfly has moved on there are now two bees feeding from the lavender’s nectar and again I watch the bob-bend-flit of their black and yellow bodies amongst the purple and green of the plant.

 

As I sit on my swing, in the perfect weather, I do one of the things that has come much more easily since my illness. In the days BS, or before sick, I rarely took the time to just sit and observe like this, and the times I did were fleeting, not with the luxury of time.  This is one of the gifts which I have received from being ill and forced to slow down: a greater appreciation of the seeming minutiae which surrounds us all the time.  And yet there is so much that goes into each of these scenes, so much that works separately and together which allows them to happen.  The perfect collaboration of sun, clouds, earth, sky, rain, breeze which lets each one of these trees, plants and insects all flourish and come together in perfect harmony, creating a dance of color and movement that are entwined and yet separate, individual and yet part of a whole, creating little vignettes of nature.  This is not minutiae, but rather an entire microcosm of the natural world that I have been privy to.

 And so I observe, appreciate the delicacy and grace of nature which surrounds us all, which we take for granted so often.  And I am grateful.  For now I realize that it is much better for me to have experienced this than to have read someone else’s written words.  While someone else’s writing might be more polished or erudite, it cannot compare with the actual experience, so much more personal and therefore valuable.  In my search for someone else’s expression of gratitude I have experienced it instead.