Good Timing

The bowl of paperwhite narcissi that I blipped on November 17 offered a lovely nosegay today, doubled in the mirror again.

I like to think of the blossoms as a gift for my mother, who would have been 95 today. Seen as a kitten-clutching little girl and in her prime years earlier, here is an undated studio shot of her as a young adult. (She had the gift of scarf-tying expertise; her three daughters did not inherit it.)

My mother retired abruptly halfway through her 62nd year, following a severe heart attack that compromised her health in her remaining years. She died a few weeks before her 78th birthday. Her life was not easy, but she never gave up, held high standards for herself and her children, adored her grandchildren, was superb in her work, helped those less fortunate, and had a wonderful smile and laugh that I will always remember.

In her memory, this Wendell Berry poem.

THE WHEEL

At the first strokes of the fiddle bow
the dancers rise from their seats.
The dance begins to shape itself
in the crowd, as couples join,
and couples join couples, their movement
together lightening their feet.
They move in the ancient circle
of the dance. The dance and the song
call each other into being. Soon
they are one -- rapt in a single
rapture, so that even the night
has its clarity, and time
is the wheel that brings it round.

In this rapture the dead return.
Sorrow is gone from them.
They are light. They step
into the steps of the living
and turn with them in the dance
in the sweet enclosure
of the song, and timeless
is the wheel that brings it round.


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