Red, White, and Blue

I am weaving flowers into my flag this year.

Flowers for beauty amidst the filthy pollution of violent words and deeds.

May they bring soft power to blunt the edges of our collective fears and rage.

Their blossoms need careful attention to avoid being overwhelmed by unlimited chaos.

Care-full balancing the elements of sun, rain, fertile earth, and clean air yields flower-full results over time we have been sadly wasting.

Rigid arsenals against their enemies never work. A good flower garden must adapt to changing circumstances, alert to all internal and external forces that thwart healthy growth.

The interconnectedness of any garden community cannot thrive if it is restricted to insistent monocultures that disregard the reality of seasons. It must celebrate the innate cycles of expansion and contraction for all beings in all circumstances that surround it.

No matter who our new head gardener will be, there is much work to be done in salvaging this garden flag gone wild.

I include yellow stars for every state of being, of living, of healing and the pursuit of happiness.

It is hard to believe that I arrived here the day after the fourth of July weekend six years ago. I remember being driven by my daughter and son-in-law through mountainous upstate New York, briefly through Pennsylvania and on into open flatlands of Ohio. My first glimpse of Lake Erie was through the haze of barbeque grilling smoke as we passed the park on its shore. I spent the night with my daughter at the Oberlin Hotel and the next day I walked onto Kendal’s campus for the first time.

Now Kendal is my home. I often use the term ‘widow shock’ to describe my own haze when I first arrived. Richard’s memorial was in March, and here I was in July, moving into a small but lovely ‘hospital room’ with my own bath. The Care Center rooms were indeed designed to be for residents during recovery post-surgery or from an illness before they returned to their own cottage or apartment on campus. To my surprise, by January 1^st, I was chosen to live in an Assisted Living room down the hall. It is more like a studio apartment and larger and more spacious than the nun-like room I first thought of as mine.

My daughter and son-in-law (and now my young grandsons) have helped me over the years to make it my own bright yellow space. I am happy here. I grow geraniums that flower in the northwest light.