Day 90

The Ipswich River's Sylvania Dam completely submerged.

Floods, pestilence, the end of the world!    No, just floods. 

There is a peninsula town called Freetown in Massachusetts which is now an island, and a part of interstate highway 95 in Rhode Island is shut down for "a few days", there are flooded basements, broken dams, deep potholes, ponds where there were never ponds before, and rivers bursting their banks all over the place!  We have so many rivers here and lakes (which are mostly called ponds here) shine everywhere you look.  There is so much water that it was at first so strange and unfamiliar to me, coming from a water-starved country, with only about 9 major rivers in the whole of South Africa.  We were raised to be so careful with water.  My parents watered their garden with the rinse water from their washing machine, which they caught in the bath and used buckets to take out to the precious plants.  I have witnessed people here leaving the water running at full speed into the plugless sink while they rinsed one plate at a time before putting them into the dishwasher, where they were going to be washed all over again!  And I am constantly teaching children at my school how to wash paintbrushes using the least amount of water.

I know the flooding has caused a lot of damage, but it was thrilling to see my little babbling brook surging downhill, and to see green creeping everywhere, and, most exciting of all, I finally saw an animal in the tree cavity I sometimes visit right at the  bottom of the 3rd meadow. 

The identity of this animal has always been a mystery, and, I'm afraid to say, remains a mystery, although the boys think it is a porcupine after looking at my photograph, which doesn't show very much, does it? 

Over the years since I noticed this large perfect nest-cavity, I have heard an animal grunting in there quite a few times, and have attempted various methods of taking a photograph.  I have tried to climb/balance on the saplings next to it so that I am high enough to take a photograph, but that didn't succeed as I slid down before I could get a good shot.  I tried tying the camera to the end of the plastic slingshot thing that I use to throw the ball for Molly, but it wouldn't stay on.  I have even dropped Jess on her head (again) in the snow, trying to give her a lift up, camera in hand, and failing miserably!  Once I took Tim with his tripod and fancy camera, but there was nothing in there that day!

The animal has what looks like greyish long fur, which Nick is convinced are quills, and several images on the net would seem to prove his theory.  It was too large for a squirrel, and I could see it breathing, I watched it for quite a time, very quietly, and all it did was breathe and sleep.   

So here we are in the 3rd meadow, with the sun coming out again, with the soggy green and naples yellow patches, and the trees just beginning to put on their new clothes.

Day 89

Frosty morning.  This was taken about ten days ago, and is a reminder that the sun did once shine and will shine again, (hopefully) for all my Massachusetts friends who are tired of being wet and damp and soggy!

School again today, so no running, just a quick walk up the hill with the black dog as the dawn struggled through the drenching rain which is still falling!  We have had two 50-year rain-storms in a matter of two weeks!  The earth is soft and squishy and water rushes everywhere, tumbling down rooves, hurtling out of gutters in spouts, streaking windows, surfing across windshields, crossing the road in torrents at times.  Numerous roads and even part of Route 24, a highway, have been closed!  I wonder about my birds, and all the 'critters', the raccoons, coyotes, and others, what do they do, they have no warm dry houses in which to shelter, poor things. 

Tim is away in San Jose, so I had to do his chores (waking the boys and feeding the cat and cleaning out the litterbox, and, on Tuesday, walking the dog), and feed the piggy, all before I left for school at about 6.40. Amazing how some days you can get everything done in an organised way, and other days things just fall apart!  (Today was an organised day, except for my last 6th grade class, who must all have drunk coffee with mountains of sugar at lunchtime!) 

I had to drive into Boston to pick up my student's artwork from the Boston Globe Scholastic Awards, and forgot Tim's GPS.  I am not a fan of driving in the city but I had a look at the map beforehand and thought I could do it.  Sheets of rain accompanied me and of course on exiting 93N into the city I was immediately lost in Chinatown!  But I didn't allow myself one jot of panic, just calmly drove down streets in what I thought was the general direction of my destination, the State Transportation Building, thinking, how hard can this be really?  Eventually I found a place to stop, calmly took out the mapbook, found my location, and then managed to arrive at the building in a couple of minutes!  I was very proud of myself.

I had memorised the return route but found that when I came out of the parking garage, I couldn't turn left into a one-way street, so again, kind of flew by the seat of my pants and recognised landmarks and streetnames, and places we have often walked, and now I know that I could drive there easily again, with no GPS or directions, the route has joined the Massachusetts map in my head, one of many maps.  This is a downfall of technology, a lot of it tends to 'dumb us down'.  I have been there twice before, following the GPS voice telling me what to do, just following the directions without any thought, blindly, like a mole.  I know that before GPS systems, taxi-drivers in London, for example, actually grew a whole piece of their brains, in the mid-posterior hippocampus, which is associated with navigation in birds and animals,  because of the enormous amount of information they needed to retain in the map in their heads.

So here are some of the maps in my head, a learning spanning fifty-five years, crossing continents and oceans, part of the map of my life.

Day 88

Tim and I went for a walk yesterday evening in the biting cold of Singing Beach.  All our lives together when we walk anywhere, we have often played that walking game where you try to get our two pairs of legs to go in a uniform way.  My way is our outside legs in synch, Tim's is the opposite, with our legs marching like soldiers, right leg, left leg, all together now!  So, in order to get the legs to go your way, you perform all kinds of hops, skips and jumps to try to fool the other person, with much merriment ensuing! 

In Grahamstown, our little town in the Eastern Cape in South Africa, we used to walk home from the cinema, about a mile, and play the game the whole way, finally reaching home utterly giggled out and exhausted, our stomach muscles aching from an overdose of hilarity.  Yesterday evening, Tim started it, and we were soon warm and laughing our heads off along the freezing beach.  Two people began walking towards us, but after observing us shrieking with laughter and falling about, they abruptly turned around and hurried back to their car. 

Water water everywhere - a state of emergency in Massachusetts, as people prepare once again for flooding, evacuations, surging rivers.  It is the wettest March in living memory, apparently, more than 11 inches already!
Water again, the wondrous, awesome (in the true sense of the word), power of water.

So my drawing today is of my morning cup of tea made each morning with water and some help from tea-leaves and spices, honey and milk.  It's a quick little drawing because it is late and I am tired and must get up very early tomorrow morning.

Day 87

If of all thy mortal goods thou art bereft
And two loaves to thee alone are left
Sell, one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

Molly and I ran 2.41 miles (3.87km) in about 30 minutes today, I had a creaky neck and stiff ankles when I began, but everything loosens up after the first km, the arms swing out and back, the feet flex and point, as I propel myself forward in the common running gait of homo sapiens. 

Molly is definitely getting old, even running behind me now is a bit much for her legs, although she is gallant enough and obviously loosens up as I do, but her left front leg in particular is becoming quite arthritic.  There were robins flying up from the meadow-grass into the tall trees and scolding us for trespassing today.  It was warmer, 39F (3.8C)

I met a couple yesterday who are completely tattooed, their entire torsos, with very colourful tattoos, and they were talking about taking their little boy to his swimming lessons at the Y, the parent/child swimming lessons where you actually get into the water with the child.  How people stare at them and feel sorry for their son.  I am intrigued by body-painting, and body-jewelry, but these can all be taken off, can be changed.  But to tattoo your body so radically like that is so permanent, something that lasts for the rest of your possibly very long life. I think I would get so tired of it.  And as your body becomes wrinkled and old, the pictures would change and wither too.

Thinking of the girl with the cats for eyebrows, I was imagining if everyone had animal tattoos on their brows instead of eyebrows, how amazing we would all look.  How we would influence one another, and it could be a rite of passage when children came of age, like a bar mitzvah.  Your spirit animal forever indelibly marked on your face.  So here is my image for today - my spirit animal, of course, an elephant. 

Just think, every time you looked in the mirror the most prominent thing you would see would be your spirit animal, you wouldn't worry about your big nose or your small mouth or your low hairline, your animal would comfort you in its familiarity, it would bind you to the other inhabitants of this earth.

Day 86

Angelina Ballerina!  12 weeks old!

This is a picture Tim took of her smiling at me, standing straight up on her feet in that practicing way small babies do, long before they can possibly hold up their top-heavy bodies on those little frog legs.  Such a dear little thing, completely alert and sociable, interacting with each person who holds her, telling them her stories, vocalising in the universal bird-like language of babies.

Molly and I ran 2.36 miles (3.79km) today, again in freezing weather, 27F (-2C), although it looked beautiful with a bright sun shining, and in the meadow it was quite warm.  But I actually prefer running in the cold, because I get so hot, always ending up just in a vest and sweatpants, my arms bright red from the cold, but feeling strong and warm inside. 

I have been noticing people's eyebrows, and how different everyone's are, like little Angelina's, so perfect and just a thin layer of hairs over the arch of the brow.  And my dad's, big and bushy and curly by the time he was an old man.  Some are plucked out of all recognition, some are archways, others straight as a caterpillar.  Apparently your eyebrows never stop growing, fueled by hormones or the lack thereof, and nor do your ears and your nose, something to do with cartilage growing or losing its elasticity.

But back to eyebrows.  Standing in the shower this morning I marvelled at how my eyebrows protected my eyes from the water at most angles.  Which is one of the main reasons we have them apparently, so that we can plod through the rain.

Also, we have sebaceous glands just beneath our eyebrows and this means that our scent is continually being broadcast via our eyebrows!  So that when a strange dog tries to lick your face in greeting, he is actually trying to sniff and lick your eyebrows!

Looking up images of eyebrows on the internet, I found this girl with plucked eyebrows and drawn-on cats!  Well, I hope they are drawn-on, and not tattoos!  

Day 85

Liberty in the distance

This was taken on an amazing New York trip with my 9th grade last year.  Strange that Liberty and Justice have always been portrayed as women, in mythology, in sculpture.

Several years ago I discovered that the world's economy actually runs on weapons.  People are always selling arms to those who haven't got enough, and there are so many people supplying armaments that there will always be a kind of balance between nations, more than enough to keep war going somewhere or other.

I think that war is inevitable, like the movement of drugs from Mexico to the U.S.  It's the same case of supply and demand.  Because war is exciting.  It seems as though men love war, that they are born with warrior souls. (It is Friday night and Nick and Tim are watching a gory Chinese movie called Warlords, and I'm sure that they are not the only guys watching such a movie tonight.)  I remember asking Stephen and Tim why they loved violent movies when they were such gentle men themselves.  They agreed that it was a cathartic experience for them.  And I have heard many soldiers state that there is nothing quite like that brotherhood you become a part of when you all go through a tough war experience together.  Hence all the war movies, (with little or no age restrictions, compared with movies showing nudity) war games on game stations, little boys biting their toast into gun shapes and shooting each other with them!  A few years ago I got into trouble at a dinner party for saying, "It seems as though if you have a penis you have to have a gun", to a shocked table of people we had only just met!

I don't know how one would have no war, I don't have any answers, but I am a fan of negotiation.

We were driving home from the airport the other day along American Legion Highway, and Tim noted that all these street names are one of the ways in which we memorialise war.  And that the reason we do this is so that we don't think all the men (and women now too) have died in vain.  My response was that in this way we glorify it too, so that there will always be new recruits for the next generational sacrifice.

So my portrait is a salute to people who protest against war.  It is interesting that so many women choose to take off their clothes in protest, like the 750 women who spelt out NO WAR, surrounded by a heart, in Australia, or those who lay down in the snow in Central Park to protest against Bush.  Perhaps their nudity is a symbol of womanhood that can't be missed, and and also maybe to represent the essence of humanity, the body, protesting against the bodies of all those killed in a war, and of their own sons, lovers and husbands being blown to bits.

Molly and I ran 1.82 miles (2.9km) today, in the freezing cold, winter is back, and indeed, there was snow on the ground at Refrigerator Corner.  A low temperature of 22F (-5C) is forecast for tonight!   

Oh, and I remembered today that I am not very good at living the observant life in terms of taking an interest in the process of grocery shopping, the travelling to this massive store, where you have a million types of everything from which to choose, then paying for it all, then packing it into the car, eventually getting back to the house, carrying in bag after bag, and then unpacking all these provisions into cupboards, fridge etc.  I discovered that I kind of loathe it from start to finish.

Day 84

Spring! 

In trying to live an observant life, it seems that the process of anything we do is just as important as the ending, whether it's a journey like Robert Pirsig wrote about in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or the effort involved in cooking a meal, which your family then gobbles up in a few minutes!  Or reading a book from beginning to end, enjoying every sentence, and not cheating by looking at the last page, or fixing someone who has scraped their elbow very badly while skate-boarding, or going for a run.
 
So I put on my running clothes and Molly knows that soon, soon we will be on our way.  I bound down two flights of stairs, with her heffalumping down behind me, as she is getting old.  Then I find the only pair of long white socks that we have in the house, that I have hidden so no one else will take them (these are so that it is easier to see ticks who are trying to walk up my legs).  I sit down on the couch and pull on the socks so that they go up over the bottoms of my tracksuit pants (this makes me look like a dork but it is, as I explained before, for the ticks).  I then put on my comfortable brown hiking boots and carefully lace them up, with double bows.  Molly is watching me all this time with her face inches from mine, making little soft whining sounds. When I stand up she is instantly beside herself and will sometimes bark, which can be annoying and which I try to discourage.  I still need my belt with the pedometer, and the camera and cellphone for my pockets.  Several pot-plants near the door, which have to come inside over the winter months, are the worse for wear from Molly's deranged dancing by this stage.  And then we're off!

I ran 1.87 miles (just over 3km) today in about 25 minutes, although I was out for ages, distracted by signs of spring everywhere, and the water, the babbling brook running down the dirt road that leads to the meadow, causing soil erosion, just like a real river.  When I was little and it rained a lot in Cape Town, I built dams with my dad in the gutters and gullies, and I passed on the skill to my children, who remember getting utterly soaked but being very happy diverting water, sailing home-made stick-boats.  So today I began by running down the road, where I stopped for about an hour and built a wonderful dam and deflecting the little bubbling stream, helping it down the stony slope.

When I got home I had a cup of tea, and saw the latest National Geographic, a special issue on Water, lying on the table.  So I glanced through it and then spent another hour reading it from cover to cover!  (Yes, I do realise how lucky I am to have the time to be distracted.)  Barbara Kingsolver, whom I admire enormously, has an article titled Water is Life, and my favourite quote comes from her: "Water takes up two-thirds of our bodies, just like the map of the world".  Some amazing and horrifying statistics in the magazine, amazing: like the fact that Ecuador is the first country to put the rights of nature in its constitution!  So rivers and forests are not simply property but maintain their own right to flourish.  Horrifying: it takes 2 billion gallons of water a day to irrigate all the golf courses in America! 

So my water portrait today is an etching I did a while ago, called Three Swimmers.  The fish is a coelacanth, because they are ancient swimmers.

Day 83

Continuing the tree theme.

Such beautiful clouds this afternoon, and a strong wind ploughing them through the sky. 

This morning on my run it was a groundhog's wedding, the phrase I have made up to describe the weather when the sun is vaguely shining and it is simultaneously snowing or sleeting!  (It was sleeting, just a little)  In South Africa when it rains and the sun shines at the same time we call it a monkeys' wedding, and children exclaim at the magical idea of monkeys getting married in the sunny rain, and often there is a rainbow.  But no one knows that expression here.

I haven't run for three days so my first circuit was pathetic, but then my legs and lungs rallied and I ran 2.46 miles (3.95km) in about 40 minutes.  Maybe 45.  It is amazing how you can push yourself to go on running, when you think that you can't do it, you probably can.  I congratulate my lungs for breathing their way through these runs, even though they are "irreparably damaged" according to the pulmonologist, from poor treatment of asthma when I was a little girl.  It wasn't anyone's fault, the doctors did the best they could then, there just wasn't good treatment to be had, no one had invented it yet. 

This afternoon I fetched the boys from school to take them to their work as swimming instructors at the 'Y', and on the way we were driving behind a small truck.  The back was full of leaves covered by a tarpaulin which was not tied down properly, so it was flapping merrily and as the wind gusted, clusters of leaves escaped their dark space, flying out and up into the air and briefly becoming birds...

Day 82

Elephant tree at the Ipswich Audubon Reserve.

Tonight Matthew phoned to remind me that we had a mandatory athletics meeting at his school at 6.30, so I had to rush home from school through the sheets of rain clogging the highway, a panoply of blurred red brake-lights, and windscreen-wipers doing overtime (Nick named them 'rain-surfers' when he was a little boy).  One big fright when a truck on the other side of the highway splashed a puddle right over the dividing wall on to my windscreen, sounding like a bucket of gravel being emptied on my car! 

I dropped Matt off outside the school because we were late, and went to find a parking spot, which turned out to be far away from the school.  So after the meeting we ventured out into the cold windy rain and I held the little umbrella over Matthew and myself awkwardly, because I am much shorter than he is.  Then Matt took the umbrella and I put my arm around him to keep us close together and under it.  It was like trying to keep up with my dad when I was a little girl, him marching purposefully along beside me.  Then we saw some people walking towards us and Matthew gave me the umbrella, put on his hood and moved out of the little umbrella's protective ring, a bit embarrassed at being seen too close to his mother.  And while I understand this perfectly, and accept it as right, a little piece of my heart suffers at this small affront, another stride of my broad-shouldered son, who is very nearly a man, on the road to independence.

So today I have drawn my watch, which is of course a symbol for TIME passing, which Matt says I mention too often.  I suppose it just strikes you more as you get older, how fast everything goes.  For example, I have been teaching at the Ecole now for 8 years.  Already! 

This watch has an interesting history.  It is a South African Airways watch that a friend of ours found in Nahant, and recognising its origin, he decided to give it to the only South African he knew at the time, Tim.  Who then gave it to me, as he has a watch already.  They both thought that all it needed was a battery.  I put it on just to try it and it obviously recognised me as a South African pilot, because it began working, and has done so ever since!  So I always have both times on my watch together, so I can think what Jess is doing in Stellenbosch, for example, having supper when we are having lunch.  I wish I had one which had London time on it too, then I would have both daughters' time-zones on my wrist.  But invariably when I look at the time I think of both of them, I can, after all, do the math.

Day 81

Many-limbed tree.

This tree has an interest in being in the Guiness Book of Records for the tree with the most branches.

This morning I read "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" by John Keats, from Endymion, and felt better.  My daily fix of poetry comes to me in an email entitled "The Writer's Almanac".  I think poetry is for me what reading the bible is for some people. 

I remember having a discussion with the boys in the car once last year, after they had told me about a kid who had been caught smoking weed in the boys' bathroom.  So I (in my normal fashion, which my family all tease me about) was getting all passionate about the fact that children and teenagers need to be taught how to live in the moment, how to delight in the mundane, how to read and write poetry, play music, make art.  And also how to relate to nature and animals, we have moved so far away from the earth.  I believe that if people feel a strong connection to the natural world they will not necessarily take drugs and do other senseless things.  Or at least be far less inclined.  So after listening to my fervent ramblings, the boys began teasing me, saying that when I was a teenager at school, I would probably whisper to my friends, "hey, do you want to meet behind the bicycle shed and do some..... you know, ...... some ..... poetry?  While sitting on the ............ ground.......... to connect with some ...............earth?"  My sons are very irreverent :-)

So here is my self-portrait for today, which was taken last year in May actually, taking delight in a breeze in the sunny meadow, enjoying the natural world!

Day 80

Dog's eye view

My Molly-dog yesterday on her walk in the forest.

I felt in a blue funk all day, struggling with the pictures in my head again, and after a barbecue at our friends' house in Nahant, which I probably ruined with my topics of conversation, and a short visit to see little Angelina, such a dear little alert and responsive baby who briefly lifted my spirits, I went to bed feeling sick in mind and body and woke up 13 hours later, this morning.  Hence no posting last night.

So my portrait today is one I did for my friend's birthday, a collage of his wife and her life. 

My son Nick, enquiring about my sadness, asked me to please not become "one of those old depressed people". 

So I won't.  It is of the utmost importance to provide a good example to my children, of how to deal with both despair and delight, and how to live in the world with integrity. 

Day 79

Shiny black dog on a shiny bright day!

It is officially the first day of Spring today!  My brother used to always recite a weird little poem about Spring, which is apparently from Brooklyn, New York, and it goes like this:
Der Spring is sprung,
Der grass is riz,
I wonder where der boidies is? 
Der little boids is on da wing,
Ain't dat absoid? 
Der little wings is on da boid.

I ran 1.8 miles today in the heat of the sun.  It was so hot and sticky and watching-out-for-ticks weather.  It was 71F (21.6C) today, and I could feel the heat ascending from the hot dry grass as I ran around the meadow. What will I do in real summer?  The reason I love running there is because it is so private.  I don't really want to run on the beach where everyone sees you and you have to greet people you know.   

I sweated a lot today because of the heat.  Generally I am not a big sweater, it doesn't run in our family.  The whole sweat mechanism is phenomenal - when we're hot we sweat, and the breeze floats by and the sweat evaporates on the breeze and some of your heat leaves with the sweat, the skin as a result becomes cool. The same basic theory is used in keeping a fridge cool, except that the vapor is recycled in a fridge, whereas once sweat evaporates it is gone.  I still remember my dad, a refrigeration and air-conditioning engineer, teaching me this, in his very patient way with me.  He was cantankerous and impatient with everyone else, but with his own children he was always good at explaining how things work.

My self-portrait today is Molly's feet with the sole of my foot superimposed on them.  Such different feet we have.  Molly's are lovely padded and hairy shock-absorbers, as she walks and runs on her toes like a horse.  She has thick rough pads for good traction and sprinting. 

My sole is this kind of weird wedge with little round peas at one end.  But wait, this slab contains 26 bones, a quarter of all the bones in the human body, 33 joints, and more than 100 muscles.  The foot is a wonder of support, balance and mobility!

Day 78

Lines in Boston yesterday.

Yesterday's run: I forgot to write about the running yesterday, which I did do, 2.2 miles, it was really hot, and I found a tick crawling up my shoe when I got home!  So the ticks are out already.  What an early Spring.

I went to school today for a couple of meetings and then had such a headache that I came home at lunchtime, so I was able to go to the airport this afternoon with Stephen, which was very sad.  Me, weeping: "But why do we have to live so far away from our friends?"  Tim: "Our country did this to us, if it wasn't like it is, we wouldn't all have moved, we would still be living at opposite ends of Cross Street."  We truly are, both literally and metaphorically, the "Scatterlings of Africa" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmnLS3ILntA

Driving home from the airport, I was gazing out of the window and my memory was triggered by the shopfronts of a strip-mall where we took the boys to Toys-R-Us when we were first in Winthrop, and I remembered how very lost we were, a small scrap of South Africa dropped into the huge muddy puddle of the USA, our family a little self-contained entity. We knew no one except Dave and Karen who lived 76 miles away!  Everything was difficult, everything had to be learned, so different from how comfortably you belong in your own country, even with all the hills and vales of our past history.  How brave we were, how quite foolish.

I went for a run this evening.  I thought it would make me feel better.  It was quite easy, because my mind was racing around the last few days with Stephen, all the wonderful conversations, passionate discussions, and some awful things he had told us about the Congo, such shocking evil in the world.  I barely noticed the two miles pulling away from my feet, didn't even have to count my breathing.

So I come back uncomprehending and desolate, to this wise man who loves me and takes me into his arms and hands me hope like a bright flower in the dark forest.

Day 77 (lucky sevens!)

My two best men on the harbour ferry today.  They are both explaining something to the other at the same time, using their hands to talk.  26 years of understanding there.  Boston skyline in the background.

It is interesting to see your city through the eyes of a traveller, someone who has not been here before.  Boston is a really pretty city, and this was a really beautiful day, like mid-summer in Manchester, according to Stephen.  When she heard I was going to live in Boston, I remember my mother's friend telling me that it was the most beautiful city she had ever been to, and that I was going to love it so much!

We arrived at the end of February, in bleak winter, and everything was covered in filthy snow ( I had naively believed that snow was white), all the trees looked dead and blackened, with no hope of ever sprouting green again, there was no colour anywhere that I could see, except American flags flying all over the place in case you forgot where you were for a moment.  And they flew in the most unexpected places, like out on a breakwater in the bay of the first town we lived in!  And it was the coldest cold I had ever felt!  I thought, "This is the ugliest place I have ever seen!"  But of course I have grown to love it, as we must grow to love our chosen homes, even when they are very far from our heart's home.

Tim would love to live in the city when we are older and the boys have gone off to college and left home, but I don't think I could bear it, not to have a garden, and trees, and woods to roam, and a beach with waves in which to swim in summer.  A city sometimes seems to me to just be lots of people living together like rats, and there are crowded streets everywhere you look, and I am not very fond of crowds at the best of times.

So here is my self-portrait for today, another photograph because the day has been too full for drawing.  So this is Stephen and I reflected in the window of a building on our long and varied walk through Boston today. And there is some sort of ghost above our heads.

Day 76

Tim photographing the raging Ipswich river this evening.  He wanted to go on to the footbridge at the right of the picture, but it was closed to the public.  The power of the water was wonderful/frightening to watch and awe-inspiring, the river has broken wide its banks and swept through buildings and basements. 

We humans think we are the masters of the universe, but a major flood or a tree-downing gale can completely ravage what we have built.  It rained for 3 days and the roads are full of potholes all of a sudden. 

This evening everyone and his dog was out looking at the swollen river, such a fascination fast-moving water has for all of us.  You can stare at it and lose yourself.

This morning I took the boys to school and on the way back stopped and parked the car on the side of our little country road, to take photographs of the frosty fields near our house.  There is a man I often see riding along Southern Ave on his bicycle, I don't even think he possesses a car as he even carries shopping bags on his bike.  He rode past me this morning, looking carefully at me as he went by, and then crossed over and started back along the road towards me, where I was walking back to my car.  I waited politely to see what he wanted to say to me, which was, "Do you require any assistance?".  Such a formal way of talking!  I told him I was fine, just enjoying the beautiful morning, and he responded, "Yes, isn't it?"  So kind of him to stop.  I came home and told Stephen, "This is what I love about America, you stop on the side of the road and someone asks if you need help, and then passes the time of day with you in a courteous fashion.  He doesn't  rape and murder you and then steal your car!"

My self-portrait today is my running shadow.  I am very tired tonight, after a full full day!  I'm so looking forward to my bed!  We ran 2.18 miles (3.5km) in about half an hour, although I forgot to time myself again!

It looks as though I have this big belly-button, reminds me of those ancient Cycladic Venus figurines.

Day 75

The sun came out today!  Yay, drying things out a bit.  There are images in the paper of people with their washing machines floating in the basement, people canoeing along a street to their houses, people being evacuated from a house disintegrating into the water on the beach, people being rescued by firemen, cars in a parking lot up to their windows in floodwater!

Today was Teachers' Appreciation Day at  my school, so there were beautiful flowers on every windowsill and an amazing spread all day in the faculty room.  A huge variety of cheeses and breads and biscuits and Belgian chocolates and gorgeous things to drink and more delicious things to eat and a fine time was had by all our tastebuds!

I was excited for this day to go by because after school I went to the airport to pick up Stephen, our good friend from long ago, who now lives in Manchester, England.  He came here about three years ago and at that time I hadn't laid eyes on him him for 10 years!   It is sad that we can't live with all our best friends just around the corner.  Instead they are scattered here and there over the globe.  My heart is full, seeing him again.

I met Tim and Stephen more or less at the same time, in 1984, when we all taught together at Nombulelo, a township school in Grahamstown, South Africa.  They were both so lovely that they restored my faith in men. Some years later Stephen's girlfriend of 7 years broke up with him and he moved in with us for five years.  The three of us became inseparable friends.  I consider these my 'informative' years, where I learned about men and women and life and reality.  We found out later that many people thought that we were a 'ménage à trois'.

So my self-portrait tonight is a cut-out of the 5 of us who lived in that wonderful spacious old stone house,16 Cross Street in the late 1980's, where it was always sunny, and the blue swimming pool beckoned, strawberries grew in the garden, three cats and a mongrel dog were about, and the girls swung happily on swings made for them by Tim.

No, Nostalgia, that is not all, is it?  There were also hard times in that house,  political detention, interesting arguments, black clouds of worry, fear of the apartheid regime, court cases, where snails ate the strawberries, and rats took over the ceiling. 

And yes, Nostalgia, we are made up of all these things, the dark and the light, and we will choose to remember more of the blue sky coming in at the window, the good times around the kitchen table, the growth of knowledge and understanding, the invisible threads of affection that still bind us together.

Day 74

A bit of sunshine upstairs, as respite from all the rain we have had, the worst rainstorm in 50 years apparently, a state of emergency in Massachusetts - route 1 has been closed all day due to a mud-slide.  But tomorrow the sun is going to come out again - brightness, dazzling warmth, the life in everything!

My 7th and 8th grade classes are in Montreal, so I had some free periods today, and had to substitute a 6th grade class in one of them.  They are so sweet, so little.  Two of them had fake moustaches on, and you could suddenly see the men in those little boys.  Funny how you grow up wanting all the time to be big, to be a grownup, and then when you are finally an adult, you realise that it's not all it's cut out to be.  Too many worries, when you're big, aren't there?

So here's my self-portrait which turned out to have a long neck, which is something I've always wanted, but you don't always get what you wish for.  But you get some other lovely things which make up for the short neck.  I am grateful to "god or whatever means the good" (courtesy of Louis MacNeice) for my blessings every day.

Day 73

This picture was taken last year in February - Jess on our frozen pond. 

We are experiencing a massive Nor'easter storm, gale-force winds, heavy rainfall, tidal damage to beaches and coastal properties, flooding in people's basements and gardens, and all the rivers running high to overflowing!  We are lucky to live on a hill.  Yesterday afternoon the rain began, today all day, and tomorrow more expected, until the afternoon, as the storm has stalled over New England.

Molly and I were sodden when we got back from our run, only 1.79 miles (2.9km), although it was the same course we always run.  I think because I am running faster, I am taking bigger strides, hence the shorter distance on the pedometer.  I forgot to time myself though.  Molly loves being dried with a towel when she is wet, she just oozes bliss while she is being rubbed down!

When the children were little, Tim used to play a game with them that they loved involving tickling.  They had to stand up in front of him for as long as they could while he tickled them.  Each one would bravely stand for two seconds, then collapse on the floor in paroxysms of glee.  When eventually they had composed themselves once more, they would come back again, to try in vain to stay standing.  I laughed and laughed just watching them, I even have a smile on my face thinking about it!  Matthew was the best of the four, he is the least ticklish person I know, although I seem to remember that my dad was not that ticklish, so perhaps Matt takes after his grandpa. 

Tickling is such a strange thing because we can't tickle ourselves.  There must be that element of surprise, and someone else's hand doing the tickling, your own doesn't work.  People have always thought that humans were the only animals that laugh, but there is evidence that rats can be tickled.  Scientists set up high frequency microphones and caught them chirping away when they are tickled, the same sound young rats make at play.  According to these scientists, their rats will negotiate mazes and press a variety of levers in order to be tickled.  They give the same little chirrup when the dopamine reward circuits in the brain are stimulated.  They think that rat humour would involve a great deal of slapstick comedy.

So this is my fourth portrait of each of my children, they are in no particular order so that if they read these they don't think I have favoured one of them before the other.  (You have to be very careful, as a mother, especially with twins!) This is Nick, who was very cross with me last night when I woke him up at 2 in the morning to make him go and fit his long frame on the little spare bed in his brother's room, because I was fearful of the storm downing more trees and the possibility of one coming down on top of him, exposed where he is in his bed next to two huge windows.  He wasn't able to do it, he protested, and eventually I dragged all his bedding off him and marched into Matthew's room, so that he had no choice but to follow me in order to slip once again into the nice warm nest of his duvet and blankets!

Day 72

Common milkweed pod, probably the only one left in the entire meadow!  I love these plants, throughout the year they fascinate me in their various stages.

Molly and I ran 2.2 miles today, in 27 minutes, which is a bit faster than yesterday, I think.  I tried really hard to run fast, counting breaths when I was nearly running out of them, funny how it helps to count in and out, if I don't count then my lungs panic and can't breathe.  Sometimes I almost think of breathing as a voluntary action, unlike most human beings, for whom it is involuntary.  Perhaps I should have been an aquatic mammal, a whale. 

Because I have had asthma all my life, I am hyper-aware of how it all works inside my chest, the little bronchial muscles strangling the airways for some bizarre allergic reason.  Some scientists believe that asthma is an evolutionary development, that the upper airways perceive a threat and try to protect the more vulnerable lungs.  Which doesn't really make sense, because unless you can reverse the process by taking medication, you will probably die, which is not much of an evolutionary step forward.

Last night when I got into bed, Tim was already fast asleep, and as I snuggled up next to him to get warm, he turned over and started tapping my cheeks, and my head, and then my neck, which tickled.  (I am very ticklish, and suffered greatly from having an older brother who was much stronger than I was and tickled me mercilessly.)  So I laughed and laughed, and then he did it some more, and laughter filled our bed.  We both fell asleep then, and in the morning he told me that he had been dreaming, and wanted to tap on a table like you do when someone is late, and you mean, "Well, it's about time!"  He also said, "Another wife would have knocked my hand away and been angry with me!"  I'm glad I'm not another wife.

So here is a picture of my eldest child, my other beautiful girl.  Your first child is always the poor guinea-pig, you are so stupid as a parent, especially when you're such a young parent, and she has turned out really well considering!

When she was a baby I used to show everyone how perfect she was, telling them "Look at her little ears, like little shells, so beautiful!"  All my friends were students still, as I was, and thought I was quite barmy, a baby was the last thing on their minds!

Day 71

This picture was taken a year ago on Magnolia Beach.  It has been 7 long months since we have seen Jess.

Last night it rained, and this morning I ran with heavy legs under a leaden sky.  I wished I could be with the three gulls effortlessly riding the thermal high above the meadow instead.

I ran just over 2 miles in 30 minutes, which is 15 minutes a mile, so instead of trying to lengthen my run, at Tim's suggestion I am going to try to run faster, to shorten my time.

I heard from my friend Mary, one of those things that once you know, you can never clear out of your mind.  An American woman and an Afghan woman have started a few secret shelters for battered women in Afghanistan.  All the women interviewed were beaten on a regular basis, with scars to prove it.  Those who started the shelter reckon that about 15 million women there require help because of abuse.

A 17 year old girl (the same age as Matthew and Nicholas) who had been married off when she was 12, had had her nose and ears cut off by her husband as punishment for running away. I feel such shock at this act, a terrible sympathy for this girl, although I can't even begin to imagine what her life has been.  How can a man do this to a girl?  How could he possibly justify such an act in his own head?

And then immediately, in a purely selfish way, after the altruistic feelings I have had for this girl,  I feel glad that I am not her.  I am so lucky to have been born into a fairly enlightened family, where I was loved and cherished by my mother and my father, where I had the same education as a boy, and where I grew up to become the person I wanted to be.  (Of course at the same time that I was growing up black people were suffering under terrible oppression right next door, but apartheid worked so well that I didn't even know that then.)  I don't mean to demean the suffering of these girls and women, just that it makes you grateful for what you have had.

So here is my second child, and these two are alike in temperament, the younger son (of yesterdays' portrait) and the younger daughter.  This portrait was done in 2000, when Jess was 17 years old, the same age as poor Bebe in Afghanistan, when we still lived in 16 Cross Street, in Grahamstown, in South Africa.

Day 70

Morning frost.

44F and I ran 3.1km today, which is just about 2 miles.  The birds were all out this morning, singing, eating, courting, dozens of robins, blue jays, sparrows, and more!  As I came into the meadow the third time, I noticed everything had gone quiet, and there hanging in the sky was a large red-tailed hawk.  The only bird still whistling away was a randy little northern cardinal, completely oblivious to the threat!

Quite a few of my daughters' friends have children already, two of the children are already 8 and 9 years old!  I can't believe these girls are mothers!  I used to film them in their plays, watch them swimming in the pool, put band-aids on their real and imagined wounds, comfort them when they were scared or having a fight, or later when they had broken up with a boyfriend.  I would ferry them all about in our roomy Kombi (VW bus) which could be filled to the brim with teenagers and little kids, all singing at the tops of their voices!  Now they are women, juggling work and motherhood, cooking for their families,  running in the moms' race at sports day, worrying that their kid won't make friends, hoping that they will be successful and happy in their lives.  And the magic of  Facebook allows me to see these darling little things growing up, from bewildered babies to smiling school-children decked out in their new clothes with their backpacks proudly slung over their shoulders.  Funnily enough, these young women have produced many more girls than boys. 

So here is my baby.  He was born 1 minute after his brother, so he is, technically, my youngest child.  

Day 69

Lily went on a walkabout today, the first time out since November, I think.  I had to follow her around because there is a nasty cat who attacks her sometimes, and, at 20, she is a bit wobbly on her pins now.

Sun. Wide Blue Sky.  But everything comes with a price.   Because we have no wolves anymore, Massachusetts is over-run with deer, which are rather beautiful, but deer carry ticks which can give other animals (including us) Lyme disease, a debilitating disease which can cause all kinds of awful things like arthritis, heart ailments, meningitis and even schizophrenia, depending on which part of your body succumbs to the infection.  If I could have a wish granted I would eradicate ticks, because nothing depends on them for food.  In fact, only a few things eat them, like guinea fowl, which we don't have here, and which, if we did, would eat all my bees as well.

A positive about the warmer weather is that it is much easier to pee in the woods.  In winter, you have to extricate yourself from layers and layers, and then, with both the cold wind and the proximity of your nether regions to the snowy ground, freeze your bum off. This is one area where men are very lucky to just have an appendage they can whip out in a hurry.

I'd actually like two wishes today.  Another wish would be to eradicate cars, and travel in small eco-friendly vehicles that fly above the ground, or build huge fences along every road, as Spring brings out all the animals from hibernation and semi-hibernation, to eat and romp and mate in the cyclical dance.  And so many of these animals meet their violent death on the highways.  I flinch with pity and well up with sorrow for every mask-faced raccoon, every shiny-coated skunk, every bare-tailed opossum (who carry on growing their whole lives), lying ruined on the side of the road.  I hate all cars and drivers (including myself) at this time of year.

While running 3.4km today, I thought about having to create 296 more portraits of myself, and it seems just silly, and I am already quite tired of searching this aging face of mine.

Everything we create can be conceived of as autobiographical, in a way.  My 6th grade classes have just completed a colour exercise, an abstract landscape made by drawing a few intersecting lines along a paper, then mixing paint to create colours using only blue, yellow and white, and filling in the shapes created by the lines with all the different colours they have made.  There are about 50 students in grade 6, and not one of these pictures is alike!  And the few idiosyncratic characters, the children teachers complain about in faculty meetings, produced even more individualistic works than the others! We are all creating, even when following directions to the same exercise, with our individual minds and hands, and bringing our own desires, experiences, theories, to our images.  Which is why it is so difficult to perpetrate an art fakery/fraud, and only a few people on earth can do it well.

So I think I will draw more of the 'landscape' of my life, the people and things around me too, because they are all part of my autobiography, my self-portrait.

Day 68

Another gorgeous day - sun and blue sky and the prettiest wispiest feathers of clouds. 

I have been teaching negative and positive space, using my bicycle as the positive shape, just as my strange and extraordinary art teacher did when I was at school, many long years ago.  This is one of the gorgeous results from a 7th grade student.  I love the way some children struggle with a new concept like negative space, and then suddenly figure out that "oh, you only paint the spaces", or "you only paint the white, Connor!" Such a new way of looking at something, only painting around and between things, instead of the object itself.

I have this 11th grade boy who is absolutely brilliant.  He brought in a piece he did over the summer, a huge drawing, maybe 5ft by 6ft, called Self-portrait as a child.  My eyes filled with tears when I had put it up and really looked at it, because it is a masterpiece.  It is filled with narrative, portraying a kind of landfill with bits and pieces of children's toys, drawings, the city of Paris in the distance, and a little boy sitting looking down from an old pipe sticking out of the soil near the top of the fill.  He said that as you grow older your memories of things change and a lot vanishes, especially childhood, particularly the very essential ways in which you experience life as a child.  So his drawing shows the tip of the iceberg of your childhood experiences, in this case portrayed as the top of a landfill. 

I have never had a student as talented as he is.  Today I told him that he has a great future as an artist, that he has an amazing talent.  He ummed and ahed and said that maybe he could do this, or that part wasn't really very good, etc., and eventually I just took his shoulders, turned him to look directly at me and said, "I am giving you a great compliment, the best thing to do in the circumstance is to say "Thank you.", whereupon he allowed himself a little smile and said "Thank you.  But I can still be self-critical, can't I?" '

Self-portrait looking at Self-portrait as a child.

Day 67

Another glorious morning, the third day I have not worn long underwear!  Such a pity that we all had to go to school and work!  Molly bounded happily about in the meadow before school, I longed to run, it was so lovely, but no time! 

Sometimes being kind to people can backfire.  Yesterday in the supermarket there was a little old man in front of me in the line at the cashier.  He was about the same height as I am, (which is quite short) and was struggling to get everything out of his trolley/carriage.  I noticed he had a big sack of potatoes in the very bottom, so, doing my good deed for the day, I bent down and picked it up and put it on the rolling counter-thing (grocery travellator?) with his other groceries.  He looked around at me surprised,  became all flustered, said “Thank you”, turned back to his things, and then turned around to ask me if I had anything heavy that he could help me with.  Shame, I felt so sad that I had perhaps made him feel small and inadequate, that  I had emasculated him.

I thought of my dad when he was old, and how even though he couldn't find his bedroom in my house, he still firmly believed in his own strength, that he would easily be able to help me cut down a 60ft tree, at the age of 87!

My portrait is therefore pensive tonight, thinking how age becomes so debilitating, how you lose your wonderful muscles and sure-footedness, how spottiness flecks your once-proud skin, how clouds flit in between the thoughts and memories in your head.

Day 66

Another beautiful day.  I ran halfway around the meadow until I was suddenly struck with agonising pain in my left thigh.  Stopping abruptly, I tried to walk a bit but it was extremely painful.  I thought I must have pulled a muscle.  My running days were over!  I tried running it off, I walked, I hopped on the good leg, then tried shaking it out, exciting Molly who thought that each shake was a kick of her tennis ball. Then, by the time I got to the road into the forest, my leg was better!  And I began running again, and in fact ran 3.5km!  It was hot, I got all sweaty, and really appreciated Refrigerator Corner every time I rounded it, the only place which still has ice.

This afternoon I got to hold the newest little person I know again - Angelina Hall!  It was her baby shower, and she received wonderful presents, and was so good, being passed from adorer to adorer.  A baby who just makes everyone who meets her go all daft and mushy.

Tonight I am using an old self-portrait.  Long ago I used to do a self-portrait for every wedding anniversary.  This is one I did in the 80's.  I love the Knysna Lourie earrings!