Day 120

Delicate traceries of spring.

Today, I did not run.  My ankles ached a bit and I thought I would give them a rest.  But I walked in the green grass which is growing so fast, you can barely see the path my feet have beaten around the meadow.  There are yellow-maned dandelions all over the place, and soon there will be milkweed plants springing up, all their beautiful pink globes of fragrance still contained in the small green shoots edging up towards the light.

Waiting outside the Y for Matthew to finish work, I saw a mother walking to the car with her two little boys, they were so similar in age they might have been twins, although one held his brother's hand very proudly, like a big brother, while the slightly smaller one was in the middle, his other hand clasping his mother's.  I wish we remembered these years better, when you are two or three years old, and everything is mostly delightful.

When Nick was 8 he was invited to sleep over at a friend's house without Matthew.  As I was driving him across town his excitement suddenly evaporated as he turned to me with such pain on his face and said, "I've suddenly realized that this is the first time I will be sleeping a whole night without my brother, Mom!"

As a twin you share your very beginning with your sibling.  I would look down at my enormous belly in the bath and see knees and elbows and feet flailing around, the shifting babies slipping over one another, swimming towards their life.

A common fight of children in cars is for territory, saying "Don't touch me!"  "Mom, he touched me!", but they never did that, they were so used to the other's proximity that life felt strange when they weren't close together.  When they were very little we would ask them which one was Matt and which was Nick, and they had no idea, they would point at the other, then at themselves, and laugh with the confusion of it all.

In the mornings they would tell me their dreams and it was often the same dream, Matthew would begin telling the story of the dream and then Nick would chime in, "and then we rolled down the hill and the birds flew up into the sky and....." and Matthew would say, "...yes and then we had to get up and we ran back up the hill but then we found....."

When one was given something he always asked for the same gift for his brother.  For years they asked for "half an apple, please?"  From the time that they were little babies, Matthew has been doing things to make Nick laugh that wonderfully infectious laughter of his.  We couldn't understand what they were saying for a long time, but they communicated perfectly in their own language.

When the boys were about 10 we were living in Winthrop.  One Saturday morning Tim and I happened to glance out of the window and witness their first real fight, where they hit each other and seemed to be trying very hard to hurt one another.  It happened in the garden across the street, and after a while it became very ugly, so Tim went out and picked them both up by the scruffs of their necks, marched them home,gave them a severe talking to, and told them to sort themselves out.  They disappeared up to their room and there was silence for a long time.  Eventually I went upstairs to check on them, to find the room in darkness and both of them lying with their eyes closed in their beds.  When I asked them what they were doing they opened shocked eyes to me and said, "It was so awful Mom, we're trying to go back to sleep so that we can wake up and start the day again and pretend that it never happened."

My mother took this photograph of me and the little boys on the path outside my parents' last little house in Lawrence Village in Pinelands. When I was three months pregnant I was talking to her on the phone, and I asked, "Do you just get bigger and bigger with each pregnancy?  Because I am huge already!"  Emma had been a fairly big baby, and Jess was enormous, 4 and 1/2 kg, and my mum joked, "Well, maybe you're expecting twins!"

Day 119

Mr Tom, the turkey, with one of the three members of his harem, tiptoeing through the forest, balancing on their thin red legs.

Time galloped away with me today, and I only had 20 minutes in which to run, in the end, so I ran 1.29 miles (which is just over 2km), but subtract 5 minutes or so spent in wonder at discovering the mockingbird's beautifully woven nest, after some surreptitious searching.  I look forward to baby mockingbirds.  I also spent a while whistling a duet with a cardinal, although it could have been a mockingbird, as I never actually witnessed the bird with whom I was singing!

No considerate raccoon or fisher came and ate the crow in the night, so I have to dispose of it down the hill, but haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet, to pick up that heavy dead body, with those sad legs.  I actually like crows, although my sister hates them because they killed baby turtle doves in a nest she was observing.  I expect I would feel the same way, if I had become attached to a nest.  But I admire them for their intelligence and their social family life.  They also mate for life, which I always love about birds which do this, and they can live close to 17 years, if they are lucky and wily.  I think they are beautiful, blue-black and strong-beaked.  They are just part of the chaotic system, there are no fewer robins because crows may eat a few babies, robins just nest more times in the year so that hopefully some of their progeny will make it to adulthood.  Hawks go for young crows too, it is all part of the cycle. 

So my self-portrait tonight is with an American robin, because I always loved Cape Robins and Olive Thrushes in South Africa, and these robins which sing and sing here, remind me so much of them.  They stick out their fat earthenware-red breasts and sing away, and they are often in a group in the meadow, amongst the new grass, observant, watching for worms, cocking their heads sideways, the better to see and hear. 

Day 118

In the morning there is a dead crow, its feet the saddest part. 

It is windy with intermittent rain, very cold.  There is a thin crust of ice on the birdbath.  The woman takes the crazy black dog for her walk.  While the dog chases the ball, the woman hears a northern cardinal, then sees him, and nearby, as usual, his wife.  They remind her of her parents, how they had been when they were alive.  The cardinal couple are constantly busy, but every now and then they come together to kiss (it looks like kissing, but is probably a feeding ritual of the courtship).

Near the beehives, she notices leaves stitched together with water and light.

When she gets back, the woman talks to her brother in England on skype.  He insists on the video and she sees herself with her old granny glasses on, looking like an old granny!  So she takes them off, vanity getting the better of her, and can see him alright, except when he shows her some detail of his office. 

It is raining softly when she goes for her run.  She flings her eager spirit through the air, but her legs are heavy and struggle to keep up.  She still manages 2.93 miles (4.7km), within about 35 minutes.  Halfway, she comes across a bird half hidden in a dense tree, and is overjoyed to discover that it is a mockingbird, a bird she hasn't seen for a couple of years in this area.  And she thinks it is building a nest, or searching for a good spot.  It sits on a branch and contemplates her, where she has stopped short.  She is suddenly aware of the curve of her own brow above her eyes crinkled against the glare, how the brow protects the eye from light and rain, and how her view is like the curve of the earth.

Later she sees crows diving and screaming at a swift merlin or sharp-shinned hawk, in a mad dash across the sky, just above the forest.  The hawk dives down and escapes, flying expertly through the trees.  Perhaps this is what happened to the dead crow?

She fetches her tall son for an orthodontist appointment, dismissing him early from school, where he has to leave his art class, which he was enjoying.  Driving away after dropping him off, she suddenly remembers that the orthodontist is closed between 1 and 2pm, and the date written up on the calendar was for another appointment which had been cancelled a few days ago.  She turns the car around to pick him up, finds him standing in the lobby outside the locked door of the offices.  She feels like a twit.  He is surprisingly gracious.

Driving back from the Y later, there is the most wonderful light show.  Sunlight struggles out of the west, illuminating spring-green trees against the dark ominous clouds which loom out of  the eastern half of the sky.   So many birds are soaring on the thermals and gusts, weaving invisible ribbons of movement, ecstatic in their mastery of this element that gives us breath.

Later the woman makes supper for her family, who eat it up happily and with gusto, their beautiful hands holding the implements which bring the food to and from their mouths, talking companionably when they are not chewing.  She sits there watching, content, but wishing that her two daughters were there as well, to fill the two empty places at the table, the two empty spaces in her heart.

Day 117

Beautiful statue at Rhode Island School of Design

As an art teacher you see a different side of students from other teachers.  Also, with small classes it is easier to get to know them, and some students I have taught for 5 or 6 years, so I have watched them grow from little eager grade 6 'babies' into 17 and 18 year old 'adults'.  So a deep affection is built up over the years.  I absolutely love my art classes, particularly Monday and Tuesday afternoons, with the older students, my A.A. Milne characters.

In South Africa, my teaching experience was very different, but I loved the children all the same. 

Mrs Ntombezinhlanu Dwane was the first black principal, after two white men, at Nombulelo Secondary School, a black school where I taught English and Art for 10 years during the height of the apartheid regime in the 1980's.  And where I was taught, so much, by my students, and by Ntombi Dwane.  When I heard the news of the car crash which killed her and her beloved husband, Bishop Sigqibo Dwane, on 2 July, 2006, I was heartbroken.  I have never met anyone before or since, with such integrity of spirit, such high ethical standards.  She was a truly fearless individual.  Through everything we went through in the 80's in South Africa, she remained strong and brave and a true friend and mentor.  She awarded me the prize of most dedicated teacher one year at the Nombulelo awards ceremony, and it was one of the proudest moments of my life.

She once told me that she really enjoyed having white teachers on her staff because "white teachers really like their students, and are a good example to other teachers".  And I identified so strongly with her, that I once forgot I was white, when we were on the way to a funeral of a white official in education, as I remarked to Mam Dwane and the other teachers in the car, "But you know, we will be the only black people there!"

I found this photograph, beaten up and peeling with age, of another person who had an abiding influence on my life, my friend Trish.  Here we are at about 6 years old (I have a front tooth missing, which is the clue), on Dalebrook beach, the scene of many of our happiest moments.  (Tim has done his best and cleaned up the image with his wondrous photoshop abilities, but I liked the one he did in black and white, which still shows the age.) We two were inseparable friends, and loved one another with a deep and pure love, which lasts still, although the thread is stretched over many continents and numerous years.  I am glad to have known such affinity.

Day 116

/

Lily and Molly cross tails.


I am so tired tonight.  The first day of school after vacation is always tough.  I seem to have been so busy helping children all day. 


At 3.25, as school ends, the few students that make up my upper school classes arrive for a two hour session, until 5.30.  I feel so sorry for them some days, but generally they enjoy this time because it is so different from the rigid academic structure they have been subjected to all day. 


It occurred to me this afternoon that I have the entire cast of Winnie the Pooh in my artroom on Monday afternoons.  First in is Christopher Robin, blond-haired, bringing snacks.  He is creative and self-assured.  Next comes Piglet, very sweet and fairly cheerful, but also quite innocent and scared of the big bad world out beyond her protected circle.  Then there is Eeyore, wearing his motorbike-riding gear, his Easy Rider swagger, with a typical angst-ridden 17-year old's pessimistic view of the world.  Oh well, perhaps there are two Eeyores, as in walks the truly gifted artist with a future at Pixar, although he will only believe in his talent when something like that really happens.  Here comes Rabbit, who sometimes has her friends and relations joining her to "work on their art", but really to skip 'etude' and to gossip and giggle.  And finally, crashing into the room in his mini-tornado of pent-up energy, late as usual, is Tigger, cheerful and curious and immediately engaging each member of the class in his jokey crazyiness! 


And what about Winnie-the-Pooh, you ask?  Well, perhaps, as Matthew pointed out when I told him this story on our way home after I had picked him up all cold and frozen from sailing, perhaps Winnie-the-Pooh is me!  I certainly love honey, but hope that I am not a "bear of little brain".


I remember when the girls were little, and then again when the boys were little, I read them stories at night, and whenever I read the A.A. Milne books, I would sometimes be incapacitated with laughter at various hilarious points in the book, and often they would gaze at me rolling around on the floor in wonder, and then little by little their faces would fill with smiles and soon we would all be laughing uproariously, although I think they were mostly laughing at me.


So here we all are in the art room this afternoon.

Day 115

"A snake came to my water-trough on a hot, hot day, and I, in pyjamas for the heat, to drink there..."

I remember how I fell in love with D H Lawrence, all his poetry, all his books, he had such a romantic notion. 

There was a certain purity about our upbringing (my generation) that will never be repeated, because of tv and playstation and youtube and ALL the myriad visual stimuli bombarding children nowadays.  I know I make a bold statement but I believe this way of life, the new technology, the glut of 'information' on the web and beyond, is detrimental in its desensitization of the human soul.  Such a population will not be willing to go out of their way for their fellow human beings or indeed fellow creatures on the planet, because they will lack compassion, they will lack the ability to be shocked, they will not be horrified by awful things because they have known about them all since they were little, they have seen ultra-violence in movies, tv shows and in video games.  Humanity has stepped away from the earth: about 90% of the population  in developed countries now live in cities and towns, whereas 100 years ago 90% lived in the country, close to the earth, knowing nature and her rhythms.  

The Essex County Beekeepers' Association, to which I belong, has education as one of its priorities, so often one or two of the beekeepers will go along to a fair or a school and demonstrate the equipment, explain a bit about bees and beekeeping, and hand out honeysticks, the favourite part for the children.  In many cases they have found that children have no idea where honey comes from and some have never even tasted honey before.  Some kids remarked that they didn't like honey because the "bees poop it out"!

I was raised growing my own vegetables in my own little patch of garden from when I was about 6 or 7, proud of my produce, a few beans or some lettuces we managed to save from the slugs and snails.  My British grandfather had a market garden all his life, and kept bees.  I remember when we visited them when I was little, what a gentle soul he was.  I have a clear memory of him lifting me up to see a common house martin's nest above the door to his shed, beautifully constructed from mud-pellets collected from puddles, with the baby birds sitting safely inside, their bright curious eyes just visible to mine.  Gramp didn't believe in a Christian god, but in Nature, dealing with animals and plants his whole life.   My own father often quoted the saying, " The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth, One is nearer God's heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth."

So my portrait today is me in my beloved meadow, a picture Emma took of me last year.   

Today I ran only 1.65 miles (2.65km) in the late afternoon, before we went out to supper with friends.  The same cottontail was in the same place, near the beehives, and we both stopped a while to regard one another again. 

Day 114

Collage of highway drivers seen from my passenger seat on our trip to Rhode Island yesterday, texting, eating, singing, smoking, picking their noses, and all the other interesting things we do while driving!

I ran late today, after spraying pyrethrin all over my shoes and socks and lower trouser-legs.  Pyrethrin is a poison which repels ticks (hopefully) made from chrysanthemums!  (My dad thought they were called "Christian anthems" when he was a little boy, I can see where Matthew gets his "For Cynthia" bushes from!) I began at 7pm and ended at 7.40, and broke the 5km barrier!  For the first time ever, I ran 3.31 miles, which is 5.32km.  It was lovely.  I am quite proud.

I surprised three grazing rabbits in different locations, although one watched me for a while before leaping away and showing me his cottontail.  And two astonished turkeys who were searching for a good place to roost hurried off in their awkward wary way.

While I was running an entire light show played out just for my enjoyment.  The firmament plumed with watercolour streaks of cloud, the sun slowly sank below the horizon, the moon began to glow in the darkening sky, and a cool evening breeze softly offered me breath.

My self-portrait tonight, garden angels swirling in the evening sky.

Day 113

Nick in the car after our tour of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD - pronounced Riz-Dee) today.

Such a beautiful day of puffy chiarascuro clouds and fair temperatures, on our journey south to Providence, in Rhode Island, the smallest state.  We toured RISD, with which Nick fell in love, but it is super expensive and also very difficult to be accepted there.  However, he is determined to try, so we shall hope and have faith in his abilities!

It was a day of floating along as a family, those exceptional days of happiness together, like fish swimming in a stream, sliding past one another every now and then, maintaining the same rhythm.

The school made me nostalgic for Rhodes University, even though I would never recommend that art school to anyone!  In fact, I detest Rhodes art school and all the lecturers therein!   We all fell whole-heartedly in love with this art school, except maybe Tim, it was a bit of arty-weird for his more conservative soul.

And even though I didn't run today, I marched up and down Providence's hills enough to count as good exercise.  As our student guide said, "You can't possibly get fat here because you are running up and down hills all day."  And stairs!

We met one of the film professors, who wore glasses over kind eyes.  He was interested in the boys and spoke with enthusiasm about the courses he teaches.  He is a documentary film-maker by trade, and is busy on a 25-year follow-up to his first documentary about the Hmong people fleeing Laos and coming the the U.S.  He has been all over the country tracking the people he interviewed such a long time ago.  An amazing project.

Yesterday I forgot to mention my run, which was 2.45 miles in 30 minutes.  My sky-blue running shoes are still wonderful, and I even wore them to be comfortable today while walking around Providence for 2 hours.

In the car I had to take them off though, my feet get claustrophobic in regular shoes now that I have reached the age of the affliction of hot flushes.  Well, not so many, but enough.  So I live in my boots which I can just kick off whenever one strikes, or slip-slops (flip-flops in America), for the same reason.  At night I have learned to stick my feet out of the covers until the hot flush subsides, and lately I can even do this without waking up!  Such a strange phenomenon, and no one knows what it is like if they haven't had one.  I remember as a teenager being quite impatient with my own mother, who complained about them a lot.  Now I understand, too late to be a compassionate teenager though.

Here is the last in the seasons series, winter, cold and bare.

Day 112

Turkey Tom display - beautiful boy!

Earth Day today and several things have changed since the first Earth Day 40 years ago, but generally things are worse than ever.  Climate change, pollution, extinction are all galloping us on towards potential oblivion.  There are many good people and activists, but they are fighting against big business and conglomerates and all kinds of different organisations which only want to make as much money as they can and bugger the rest!  It is very troubling and hard to have faith in the human race.

When I was little I wanted to live on a farm and now I have the same desire.  I would love to be close to the earth again.  I cherish the plot of land behind our house with a passion, all the creatures in it are fascinating to me, and some are known to me, others I see in tracks or scats to identify that they were there.  If ever the meadow and its woods are sold, or developed, I will die a little death and have to move away.

The turkeys are back and the toms have been demonstrating their very beautiful displays.  They are the gentlest of adversaries, puffing themselves up like this and walking slowly and with great elegance, around one another, almost admiring the other, an elaborate dance in slow motion.  And then suddenly, as if the testosterone levels are suddenly switched off, everything on them flattens and goes back to normal, and they begin pecking away at the ground for food together. "Oh, and how's your day been?"  "Oh look, there's a tender morsel over there..."

And the females are drab brown creatures, hurrying along, looking like elderly ladies in raincoats that are too big for them.  "Come on Mavis, or we'll catch our death....."  "Coming, Agatha, hold your horses....."

So, even though yesterday's plenty-filled image of summer should have been today, in honour of Earth Day, here is the third in the series: autumn.

Day 111 (Nelson)

My green top became part of spring in the forest today.

Running was hard.  I thought, "I really hate running"... "I don't want to do this"... "This is impossible"... "How am I ever going to get up Heartbreak Hill?"... "When will the breeze cool me down?"... "I think my toe is going numb"... and other negative thoughts.  But then I pulled myself together, or "pulled myself towards myself" as Jess used to say, pressed on, and it became easier and easier and in the end I ran 2.46 miles (3.95km)!

I left my water bottle on top of a little woodpile in the forest, where a tree blew down once and someone cut it up and took the trouble to stack the wood into a small pile.  When I drank long and hard from the bottle after the run, I noticed many little grey feathers scattered about on top of the wood and on the surrounding pine-needled floor.  I imagined the death which had taken place, the tearing apart of small bones and flesh, the use of beak and talon.  The suspect: a hawk which has been frequenting the area around our bird-feeder and which surprised me in the forest yesterday, when it took off quietly from a spot close to my head, flying swiftly and expertly through the tall trees without knocking into anything.  

The common belief is that animals move about perfectly within their own domains, never making mistakes, but I have observed several clumsinesses: 

A squirrel chase 50 feet above us in the trees ended with one plummeting to the ground right in front of us once when we were camping in Maine. The boys and I stood gazing at the little dead body, wondering what to do, when suddenly she came to, looked vaguely embarrassed, and teetered off like a drunken lush, gaining balance as she proceeded into the undergrowth. 

Yesterday I came walking up the steps of the deck to see two fat doves happily pecking on the ground beneath the bird-feeder. They were shocked into action, running up the rock away from this intruder on their skinny red legs, when one of them tripped and almost fell on her beak! 

And I have a video that I took of 3 cormorants on a rock in Clarke's pond.  One cormorant takes a leap off, mightily flapping just above the water for an endless time, eventually gaining height and flying into the distance.  After a while the second cormorant dips quietly into the water and dives down, feeding.  The third, left alone on the rock, looks nervously about, then he too slips into the water, paddling with his little webbed feet.  Up pops the second cormorant from her dive, a few inches from the third cormorant, who, taken unawares, flaps his wings and almost leaps straight up out of the water in fright!

Seeing as I put up the picture of spring as a personified tree yesterday, I am going to put all four seasons consecutively, so here is summer.  They are not very good quality photographs.

Day 110

This fallen tree always reminds me of a giant, spider-like creature moving through the woods.

Today the boys and I left quite early to go and visit U-Mass Amherst, a college about two and a half hours away, so there was no time for a run, but I did take Molly for a longish walk first, in the beauteous early morning light which made long shadows of the trees.

There are so many colleges here and the tradition is that you have to visit them to see what they are like, some families spending a small fortune on plane-fares and traveling to look at several colleges.  Just like everything else in America, there is too much choice, I remember us going into the SUPER Stop & Shop supermarket the first day we arrived in this country, and the first aisle we walked into was this monster cereal aisle and what with jet-lag and the shock of everything new, the cold, the ugly dirty snow everywhere, this whole new culture, we almost burst into tears at the sight of so much, so many, on and on as far as the eye could see! 

In South Africa there are 4 or 5 universities and you just go to whichever one you choose.  But in America, there are thousands of colleges and you are expected to apply to quite a few, all across the country, and then choose the best one which accepts you, it is such a process!  And a money-making business too, as you have to pay for each application.  It is SO strange to me, this whole modus operandi.  And the high school wants their students to go to as many different schools in different states so that they can brag about where their alumni go as well! 

It was a great deal of fun though, the long car-drives there and back, talking, listening to the boys' music and to an hour of the BBC (that was the deal), and the campus is like a small town, with skyscraper residences or dorms, and beautiful state-of-the-art facilities in every department.  If they go to a state school like U-Mass, we pay in-state fees, which are not as much as a private college or a college in another state. 

This is Spring, from a series I did on the seasons, with each season a personified tree.  I'm feeling rather disappointed in some people tonight, and not very creative.

Day 109

My three best boys, Nick, Matt P and Matt.

The boy in the middle is my boys' oldest friend in America.  So we have known him for 9 years, since they were all just little 8-year olds, (Matt P was only 7), knights playing with swords imagined from driftwood found on the beach just down our hill.   Matt P adopted our family, he loved that we were different and foreign, whereas other people and children were suspicious of us for the same reasons.  He spent so much time with us, but was forbidden by his parents to come to our house before 9 o'clock on weekends, so we knew, when the knock came early Sunday morning, that it was 9 o'clock, time to get up and let Matt in for a days' playing, and that he had already read the entire Sunday paper to hurry the time along until he could be with his two best friends!  He became a part of our family, (we had several children like that in South Africa), as we all grew to love him.  He is such an interesting child, very tall (a gentle giant) and wise and sweet, and a brilliant photographer already, at the tender age of 16!  Emma and Jess call him their "brother from another mother".

Today was the Boston marathon, which has been going on for 114 years!  It is the oldest marathon in modern times.  Women have only been allowed to compete since 1972!  In 1967 a woman ran after registering as K V Switzer, so that they would think she was a man, and when one of the judges found out he ripped off her number and tried to eject her from the race!  How far we have come! 

It was very thrilling to watch the wheelchair race, which was won by a South African, Ernst Van Dyk, for the 9th time!  And an Ethiopian woman, 27 year old Teyba Erkesso, won the women's race.  So inspiring.  So I put on my new floaty shoes and off I went, but I had a headache which got worse, and so I only ran 1.49 miles (2.39 km), but the shoes work, because this morning I hopped out of bed with still no pain!  I take Molly walking first, and yesterday I carefully cleared away all the leaf-litter and pine-cones, sticks etc in the one region of the dirt road that I run on, so that my run yesterday was smooth and easy.  Today when I got to that section, I found that the turkeys had just as carefully scraped it all back again on to the road, looking for grubs and seeds!

My self-portrait tonight is blue.  I have been sad thinking of my friend whose son is very ill, and wishing them all well.

Day 108

"What?", the 75 people-year old dog, with the grey tummy, seems to be asking.
 
I haven't been running since Wednesday, because I had to go to school Thursday and Friday, and Saturday was too busy.  But the few days' rest, and running in socks, probably fixed me, as I am utterly pain-free now.  I still walk every day with Molly, in the forest and on the dirt road to the edge of the meadow, guarding against the dreaded ticks.

Tim decided that I couldn't run in socks, that I needed proper running shoes, so yesterday afternoon we went to the New England Running Company, where I had taken Nick when he had problems with his hips while running cross-country.  They are so thorough, and the man who served us was very sweet.  He asked me to walk away from him and back to him with bare feet, and then he raved about how perfect my feet were, what wonderful arches I had!  (It was very flattering, as I don't think anyone has ever told me that something about me was perfect before!  Except maybe my mother.) 

He then proceeded to bring out about 6 different pairs of running shoes which I had to try on, then run up and down the sidewalk for him to watch.  Tim stood with him and he told him that my running gait had "almost flawless style"!  He also confessed, once I was paying for the shoes that I had chosen, that he really loved my red hair.  Then he looked a bit abashed, and told Tim he liked his hair too, and we laughed and told him we were quite partial to his hair (he was balding).

So today I ran exactly 2.00 miles (3.21km) in my sky-blue pair of the lightest cushioniest running shoes you have ever seen!  My first pair of running shoes!  There was a gentle drizzle to cool me, and also beautiful sky, with bits of blue to match my shoes, so it felt odd that I was still being rained on, but perhaps I was a little rain-goddess for a day, like Rob McKeena in Douglas Adams' So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish,
"And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKeena was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him."

(I have just tried (unsuccessfully) to put my glasses on over my second pair which are already on my face!)

Life is laughter and sorrow, so here is the sad part of today's blog:

I have always loved nature programmes, and nature articles found in magazines like National Geographic, and now, whenever I see or read one, it brings me to tears with its dire prophecies about species being in peril and even about imminent extinction. I put the tv on to a programme about frogs while I was making dinner tonight, and became more and more depressed.  Frogs have been around for more than 250 million years, they endured when the dinosaurs died out, they have survived so many changes, and suddenly now they are rapidly decreasing, due mainly to the chytrid fungus which is thought to be spread by people's movements around the globe, also by climate change and by habitat destruction.  

I am (again) rather disappointed in the human race.  But also hopeful at some scientists' perseverance in trying to raise various endangered frogs in captivity and thereby develop fungus-resistant frogs and re-populate their familiar areas.  Frogs are thought to be an indicator species, a bellweather of environmental change,so their disappearance is very worrying.   I have an old photograph of an x-ray of a frog, the delicate bones of which were so beautiful as to stop me in my tracks at an exhibition in Cape Town when I was still at school. 

So here is a portrait of my new running shoes, drying above the woodstove, which float me along through the green meadow, through the clean, rain-drenched grass.

Day 107

Daffodils at the cold grey beach today. 

This morning both boys had to be in places in opposite directions by 9am, so Tim took one and I the other and then we met up at the B S cafe (its real name!) for a breakfast date. The full name is the Beach Street Cafe. 

We sat across the table from one another and told of our separate experiences over the past week apart, and as he spoke I noticed all the parts of his face that I love, and how they are changing with age.   His eyelids beginning to slouch over his green eyes, his beard turning to salt and pepper.  So stressful, this job of his.  But I am so glad to have him home again. The entire day I have understood the biblical phrase, "My cup runneth over".

I tried to phone Jess today but she was driving so she couldn't talk, and then we were going out, so when I put down the phone I had a little weep of self-pity, missing this daughter who is so far away.  I ache with longing.

I loved my first child with such a deep love that when I was pregnant with the second, I wondered how I would love her as much.  And then you just find you have this limitless supply!  You love them all fiercely, with your entire heart and all of your soul, utterly and completely.   You also have a different relationship with each one, because of how their individual characters interact with yours, because of your shared history, all the millions of moments you have experienced with them.

So my portrait tonight is of myself with four arms, like Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess, although I am holding my four children in these arms that are always wide open to them all.

Day 106

Lily trying to look up at me but the sun is too bright. According to Jess she is over 100 years old in people years.  Such a little moth-eaten bag-of-bones, with a sway-back and hanging belly like an old old horse.

I am fetching Tim tonight from the airport.  Every time we are reunited after an absence is exciting, which sounds pathetically sentimental, but there you are.....

This afternoon I fed the birds, as I hadn't done for two days because of school, although there was still food there.  But there were no peanuts,which are beloved by the jaunty tufted titmouses, the ingenious nuthatches, the hopeful downy woodpeckers, and of course the belligerent blue jays.  It is funny to watch the birds try to get the last nut, which is invariably virtually impossible to extract.  It eludes them, sliding from one side to the out-of-reach other when they peck at it.  Sometimes the blue jays retire to a nearby branch and contemplate the nut-feeder for a while.  You can see them considering the problem, trying to work it out.

Every morning I feed all these old animals, the Lily-cat, the old rhinitic piggie, the aging black dog, and wonder at their survival.  I hope they don't all die at the same time.  The piggie has lived in her little cage for her whole life. 

I loathe cages and never allowed my daughters an animal in a cage.  When the boys were seven years old they wanted a guinea pig so badly that I eventually said that if they picked up all the dog-poo in the garden for a month, they could each have one.  Lo and behold, they religiously picked it all up for a whole month, never forgetting once!  So then we had two guinea-pigs, and Tim built them a lovely bottomless cage that you could move around on the grass.  After a bit, we just left the cage open all day and they wandered around the garden at will.  Every evening we would have to find them and chase them back into their cage for the night, so basically, the boys had two wild guinea-pigs.  Once we could not get the crazy piggie, Blackfoot, to come out of the woodpile.  Eventually Matthew suggested spraying her with a hose, and that last resort resulted in a soaked black piggie streaking for the sanctuary of her cage!

My portrait today is my latest demonstration figure, still unfinished and starkly white.  She hasn't become herself yet, just like the students I teach.  She is becoming.  She will grow more flesh.  She will put on more colours.

Day 105

Matthew coming in from sailing practice this evening, 3rd from the bow.  They arrive on shore, some freezing, like Matt, the others warm under their drysuits, because they have worn the correct attire for a cold day on the ocean!  How lucky, to be able to sail as a school sport!

I didn't run today because I had to go to school, so just two little walks with Molly, one in the early morning to collect lovely juicy green grass for the piggie, and another in the early evening to replenish the bees' jar of sugar syrup.

I walk through the forest holding the heavy jar of light golden liquid in both hands, like a servant bearing a precious gift for the Honey Goddess.

I smile as I notice all the molehills in the dirt road near the beehives, popping up to see the spring.  Some people hate moles with great passion, but I like them because we found one in the bath in the outside bathroom in Cross Street once.  Emma discovered the poor thing, a beautiful shiny little Golden Mole, and Jess and Emma and I built it a ramp and then a passageway leading to the garden so that it could escape.  It looked very happy to be able to leave its bewildering prison.

My reason for being at school was to attend several presentations by a group of cartoonists who are members of Cartoonists for Peace, begun by Plantu.  An amazing Israeli named Uri Fink, who does absolutely brilliant work, a Palestinian named Khalil Abu Al Arafeh, who churned out wonderful caricatures of students in the audience and then proudly handed them all out to the previously oblivious models!  And then there was Plantu, who has been a political cartoonist in France for many years, recently having his 15 000th cartoon published!  He talked about his life and drew pictures illustrating his story.  (I remember Emma doing this when she was little, starting at one point on the page and then telling a long story and drawing, drawing, until she had filled the whole page with it.)  And it was poetic, how cartooning saved his life.  He didn't speak for a long time when he was a child, but only drew images.  For someone who took so long to speak, he surely has a lot to say now!

After all the presentations, we had lunch together, and Monsieur Plantu sat next to me!  My french had been stretched to its limit all morning, but this was nearly breaking point.  When I drove home a bit later I actually had a headache from concentrating so hard for so long!  It must be very good for my old brain, to be so challenged!

My portrait tonight is of a tree in full bloom which I noticed today next to the churchyard.  The sky had wisps of white which seemed to emanate from the blossoms themselves.

Day 104

The circle of Life

A beautiful cool morning.  I decided to run in socks.  Yes, socks!  My ankles and knees have been painful and I thought that perhaps my hiking boots are the culprits.  I have read that running barefoot is better for you unless your feet pronate terribly.  There is a group of people who run in Somerville, all along the streets, completely barefoot, and an fb friend's husband is training for a marathon barefoot.  So, I can't run barefoot in the meadow because of ticks, but I wore some old socks and it felt wonderful!  Of course every time I rounded refrigerator corner my feet got wet but it didn't matter.  I ran 1.39 miles (2.23km).

Tufted titmouses are all courting, with the strangest little songs which I haven't heard before, and I'm not sure which sex is being flirtatious, but I observed one titmouse frantically beating her/his wings, and then flitting about, up the tree, lilting from branch to branch, and then back down the tree, alighting only for a moment on each twig, lower and lower, with two other titmouses in hot pursuit, a song and a dance!

I was cleaning the counters in the kitchen this morning and found myself singing Shout very loudly.  Last night Nick's a capella group sang this song at a concert at the school and it was beautiful, Nick being the star singer.  They also sang Loch Lomond and Fix You, which both brought me to tears.  Why are some people so pathetically sensitive while others go through life on a much more even keel?  I remember my friend Trish being so impatient with me when I cried at sad or sweet or solemn things.  I had a beloved record that I always listened to, with The Count of Monte Christo on one side, and Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose on the other.   In the latter story, Phillip Rhayader is an artist who lives alone in a lighthouse.  He is wounded in body and spirit and loves a young girl, Fritha.  When Phillip shouts her name into the wind, "'Frith!  Frith!", I would always dissolve into tears, no matter how many times I had listened to it before, it was just so terribly terribly sad each time.  One time we were listening together, and when Phillip cried out "Frith!" Trish cried out "Froth!" and we both collapsed laughing!

But to go back to singing in the kitchen, it is amazing how many times we fill silence with music, either music out of speakers, or music out of our mouths and lungs, old hymns, tunes we learnt when we were children, songs we love now.  My mother would sometimes sing out loudly, suddenly, in a beautiful voice, and often she would just make up a song, using a familiar tune and her own words, or just a random tune which didn't really make sense, it was just her joyful song leaping out into the startled air, enchanting me, the listener.  It is genetic, because Matthew does the same thing exactly.

I enjoyed the pencil crayons (they are called colored pencils here, and crayons couleurs in french) that I used for today's self-portrait.  There is a wide range of colours and you can press hard with them and they are lovely and soft and creamy, with overlays and texture. 

Day 103

Molly in the morning sun and shadows.

I had an interesting conversation with one of the teachers at my school today, about South Africa.  He is very knowledgeable about my country, which is rare.  It is his belief that "money for free" never works.  He said that he ruined his only daughter like that, giving her more and more money, and only when he stopped did she pull herself together and get a job, so that she managed to stand on her own two feet and finally be happy!  He thinks that in South Africa after the ANC took over, the most money should have been put into education, so that if you obtained good grades at school, you were assured of a place to stay and food and clothing.  Not a bad idea. 

I think they should have poured money into education and into police training.  Upgraded every school, as a matter of priority, even the ones way out in the bundu!  And none of this outcomes-based learning, for which the majority of teachers were utterly ill-equipped.  If you educate children from pre-school (or even before pre-school) to be thoughtful, creative adults, your society will slowly and surely change for the better.  There is an interesting story about a Harlem native, Geoffrey Canada, who worked for years to try to rehabilitate teenagers on drugs.  He became so despondent of ever helping anyone, when he had the brilliant idea to get to kids before they are even born, in order to change what happens to them, to make sure they will not be drug addicts, criminals, losers.  When he began his project he would go up to pregnant women and ask them to be part of his "Baby College"!  He has had the most extraordinary results.  http://www.hcz.org/  I love stories like that.

My self-portrait tonight is in high shadow, and a lot of erasing was done, it took me far longer than I had anticipated.  I think it shows being thoughtful.

Day 102

Workers at a railroad crossing in South Africa.

Up to the age of about 13 or 14, growing up in apartheid South Africa, just as I had no inkling of a vast multitude of black people living just a few miles away from us, I also had little knowledge of sexual matters of any form , even though I was an incredibly well-read child.  After all, sanctions had largely cut us off from the rest of the world, we had no television, and we saw about 2 movies a year, the most memorable up until then having been Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music! 

So we really had a long and happy childhood, climbing trees, learning embroidery and sewing, riding bikes all over our suburb, devouring books, walking (together or alone), playing cricket with our cousins, playing day-long imaginary games, painting and drawing, hanging out as a great laughing gang of neighbourhood children, discovering our strengths and our fears, our abilities and our loves.  And our mothers had no idea where we were or what we were up to most of the time, as long as we came home for meals! 

Such a far remove from my children's lives, both in South Africa and here in America.  We were the paranoid mothers, the ones whose children might be kidnapped at any time by one or other evil faction in South Africa.  When Jess was 9, she had to walk home alone from school one day, a distance of about a km, and when she got home she told me that she had devised a scheme for each section of her journey home, in case of attack.  "If someone attacked me on Somerset Street, I would run back to school.  If someone attacked me near Heunis (Building contractors), I would run into the offices, if someone attacked me up Glanville street, I would run to the house on the corner (where an old lady lived), and if someone attacked me in Cross Street, I would run home as fast as I could!"  I was amazed that she would perceive such danger, (we had tried to save them from much of what was happening) and saddened that my little daughter had planned her way home to such a degree of fear.

And all these thoughts have come about about from listening today to the children I am teaching who are aged 11 and up, and every one of them is a completely different child from the children with whom I grew up.  These youngsters were born with a tv remote in one hand and a computer mouse in the other.  They are ferried from one violin lesson to the next soccer practice.  They know which college they will be attending and what they are expected to become.  They are constantly adapting to and accommodating the ever-changing technology which is shifting the very bedrock of our lives in new ways every few months.  They have all watched simulated sex in movies, and simulated violence of a kind I could not even begin to imagine at the same age.  Sometimes it seems as though they have lost their innocence almost before they even had it.

My portrait today is a quick quick drawing, because I am so tired tonight, of that wonderful childhood in Cape Town, and yes, I know I was a privileged white child, but I didn't choose to be that, it was just my life at the time, and it was lovely to me then, in that very innocence of which I have written.

Day 101

I love this lake of clouds.  It all depends on the perspective, doesn't it?  The clouds float in the lake, water ripples the sky.  And the trees in between.

I am taking a short break from running, I'll run again on Wednesday.  I have had bad aches and pains and Tim thinks I should give my body a rest sometimes, not run every day.  When I get up from sitting, it takes my legs a while to agree to walk without hobbling.  I think I will invest in good running shoes which might help, also have a Lyme's disease test perhaps, because the disease can attack your joints.

We spend a lot of our lives cooking.  Sometimes I will enjoy cooking, like a big meal for friends and family which you know is going to be appreciated and around which will rise good conversations, affection, laughter and happy eating.  But I must confess that most of my time spent at the stove I would rather spend anywhere else!  Well, no, not cleaning toilets, but there are so many more things that I would love to be doing instead, like reading.  Today it felt like I wasted my entire precious Sunday afternoon roasting a chicken, and making an apple pie for dessert. (It was delicious, and there was appreciation, as well as good conversation, etc.- see above.)

So this is my creation for the day, an apple pie in honour of spring, with a flowering magnolia for decoration.  In South Africa we called them 'tulip trees'.  There are so many around here, magnificent in their flowering prime right now.

Day 100! (265 to go)

The soppiest of dogs! Lollipops.

1.98 miles (3.18km), with a break near the end to check on the opossum, who is still not there, although I thought I heard rustling, so maybe she has survived.  Strange how different each day's running is.  Yesterday was a cinch, today was struggle from beginning to end!

The wind was cold and little clouds raced across the sky, crisp white hurrying clouds.  Admiring the wide blue sky after all the grey rain of yesterday, I suddenly found myself rapidly plunging towards the ground, where I landed on my knees and then my hands, the momentum taking me right down until my whole body was lying surrendered to the grass.  (It is always better to fall with no one watching, so that you don't have to leap up laughing and pretend nothing has happened, even though blood is streaming down your knees and the palms of your hands are on fire.)

I had hardly any sleep last night, and so this afternoon at about 4.45, I thought I would have a little nap until I had to fetch Matthew from school (he sailed in a regatta in Maine) at about 6.30, or so I thought.  I was on my way upstairs to my bed, when I spotted the little couch in sunshine and felt compelled to enter its warm embrace.  Next minute the phone was ringing and I leapt up in that disoriented state, when you have been floating in dreamland and reality suddenly slaps you in the face.  Still in a trance, I tried to locate a phone in the map of my house in my head, eventually remembering one in the closest room to the aforementioned couch.  I picked it up.  A voice said, "We're just coming past Liberty Tree, we'll be there in 15 minutes." The words swam around my brain for a bit and I almost asked, "Which one are you again?"  And then slowly the voice and the words came into focus and I knew I would have to drag my tired self out to the car and drive to school to fetch Matthew, who was an hour early.

My self-portrait is a photograph of two large noses, my beloved dog and her beloved owner.  (Both photographs taken from the aforementioned couch, which has a lot to answer for today.)

Day 99

Funnel-web spider-web near the bee-hives. 

A misty morning again.   Everything was beautiful, pristine, the grass strewn with jewels, the tips of all the leaves hung with diamonds.

I ran 1.5 miles (2.4km) in 20 minutes.  It was easy running and I could have gone on for longer but I had to leave.  A gentle rain cooled my skin, birds sang, frogs peeped, and there was a brief moment of feeling "All's right with the world!"  A brief moment.

I was treated to lunch by my friend who lives too far away.  Going to her house is like driving from Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth!  We women talk and laugh and cry, sharing our histories as they unfold.  An enduring and loyal bond exists through time, stretching and contracting, always abiding.

It is so late that I must use an old picture again, so here is a favorite painting of mine, the lemon tree that I painted 35 years ago.  The lemon tree is part of the sky and light illuminates the branches and the fruit.  And the roots come from the earth and the sun is woven through it all... 

Day 98

Lily of the valley.  They are sprouting everywhere in the forest, right up up through the detritus of dead leaves and pine needles, their pure colour shining up to the sun.

It was much cooler today and I decided to run, chest feeling better.  I amazed myself and ran 2.56 miles (4.1km)!  Coming up Heartbreak Hill I surprised a little blue butterfly which then proceeded to flutter along right next to me for about 100m.  I was grinning like the Cheshire cat, and feeling blessed, when the thought crossed my mind that it was perhaps scolding me for disturbing it, not flying alongside me in solidarity.  Or it got caught in my slipstream.

When I got to the opossum tree, there was no opossum today, and I fervently hope she didn't become a meal last night!  It is strange how we anthropomorphise things so much.  Or not even that, just fall in love with a creature.  The moment I began observing this wild animal, it became dear to me.  As Nick said, "And you say it's your opossum, Mom, but it didn't even know!"  But I knew.  I will keeping looking out for her.  Maybe she's moved trees.

A Cooper's hawk swooped down from the tall white pine to the bird-feeder this morning, but all the birds, chipmunks and squirrels had already scattered.  It flew off looking quite bewildered, a juvenile, I think.  They are exquisite predators.

The trees are nearly all showing signs of leaves, some more than others, and several are still in the Pointillist phase, like Seurat would have painted spring, little tiny dots of colour.  My portrait today is one I often give for homework in spring, "Draw yourself with flowers instead of hair". 

Day 97

Snapping turtle at the Ipswich Y.

We arrived at the Y this afternoon to see two young boys of about 9 or 10 trying to coax this enormous snapping turtle across the parking lot, fending off cars while she made her slow and primitive way across the hot tarmac.  Nick and I joined them and then the boys had to go off to their lesson and Nick to teach, so I promised to stay and see her across the rest of the parking lot and the little road before the river.  Nick told me later that the boys were congratulating each other for saving yet another animal, apparently they had saved a bird and something else before this, and they were very proud of their contribution to saving the ecosystem!

We need more boys like that and my heart is glad to hear and see these sensitive souls.  I remember seeing a young seal sleeping on the beach in Winthrop, where we first lived when we moved to America.  The mother was hanging around in the shallow water while the youngster took a nap in the sun, and Matthew and Nick and I were gazing wonderingly at it from the walkway above the beach.  Enter four boys, whose first action was to begin throwing stones at it! The same reaction as the first sailors to see polar bears - Oh, let's slaughter them.  Huh?  Incomprehensible, indefensible.

These snapping turtles are dangerous to pick up, because they are SNAPPING turtles, they can bite off your fingers if you pick them up in the usual way, on either side of the shell. They will turn their heads and stretch to where your hands are holding them, and casually bite off a digit!   The boys remember all the tortoises we rescued in South Africa, on those long dirt roads in the Eastern Cape, they were always wandering across, and we would carefully pick them up and inevitably get peed upon, and then deposit them in a safe spot in the general direction in which they had been going in the first place.

This old lady was going back to her nesting grounds, apparently they go back to the place they hatched from, which is very sad sometimes because a house has been built there, or lots of roads, and so there is a very high mortality rate even amongst adults.  But the lucky ones can live to be 100 years old!  This one is very large, so pretty old, so a lot of development must have happened in her lifetime.  Such marvellous prehistoric tails they have, they are like little dinosaurs with a carapace on top.  When she finally made it all the way across, she bushwhacked through old stiff stalks and brush, and then just lay down exhausted.  Amazing, just following her nose and her instinct in a straight line toward the water, with infinite faith, striding along on her old old scaly feet.

89F today!  That's nearly 32C (for the rest of the world, except Belize, Myanmar and Liberia)!  Very hot.  I walked about 1 mile today because my chesty cough is not very conducive to running.  And the ticks are out!  I already have 5 tick-bites and it is only the beginning of April!  I detest them and wish to eradicate them from the face of the earth.  They do no good to anyone, only a tiny sector of animals eats them, and all these creatures do not absolutely rely on ticks for their entire diet.  Turkeys, guinea-fowl and egrets are the only ones I know of.  Guinea-fowl eat bees too, otherwise I would acquire some to eat the ticks.  And they do so much harm to so many animals, they really need to go.

So here is my portrait of a Tick Eradicator, a Kreepy Krauly type thing like the South African swimming pool cleaner invention.  Although this is a fuzzy furry thing which rolls around on several wheels in the fields and woods, picking up ticks, who then march like zombies, lured by a chemical smell utterly beguiling to all ticks who simply cannot resist it.  They all then make their way up to a central trapping system which tortures the ticks (no, not really) which just kills the ticks.  Maybe I can patent it!  I really REALLY hate ticks.