Please excuse Auburn’s absence the past few days.  She’s been enthralled with winter.  It’s taken her away from her computer and into that phenomenon known as Spring Cleaning.  The 70-degree temperatures in Phoenix have fooled her, as well as, the leafing trees into thinking that it is time for the semi-annual closet cleaning and leaf unfurling.

She’s not herself.  She may not be well.

She may never be the same.

If you need to talk to me for verification of this excuse, I’m so sorry to tell you that I’ll be unavailable, as the golfing in Palm Springs is to die for.

Sincerely,

Auburn’s devoted husband, Dan

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

– Lewis Carroll

And thus, we thrust ourselves into another day.  The January air is cool and thin, but our creations are large and lusty.  We write because our bodies need to; our breath is conditioned upon one word following another.  We design and draw and write until we are spent and our minds are emptied.

A swelling of more ideas then occurs and we must write (or design or draw) again.  And then again.  And yet again.

Which road to take?  Truly, it doesn’t matter as long as we point our bodies in a direction and walk forward … until we change our minds.

Rock on, Alice.  Paint the music.  Draw the words.  Design the poems.  If you don’t like the color of the roses, then splash on a different color.  Take a different trail; pose a hat upon your head and have another cup of tea.

Yes, truly — Have another cup of tea.

Here’s Wilson just before entering big boy boot camp.  He’ll be there one more week, but today I had a visit with him.  I drove up just as he was completing a walk. 

Yes, I said, a WALK!  Not a drag down the street by a huge hairy dog.  A Walk.

Two weeks ago, Wilson’s concept of the world and his place in it was more on the lines of center-of-the-universe, I’m too sexy for my fur, yup, yup, let me jump into your face because I can.

Now, he’s the calm dog, sporting a red Service Dog vest, heeling, sitting, downing … completely Mister Big Boy at the end of a leash.  Our (hysterical with joy if he thought you had a cookie in your pocket ) dog has, in the space of two short weeks, become a grown up, well-mannered and obedient.

I wonder where these folks hide the alien dog brains, ’cause this sure isn’t OUR Wilson.

I met Mary during law school.  One day she simply parked herself next to me during class … a Law Ethics class … and then proceeded to flagrantly cheat off me during every exam we were given.  Law Ethics, indeed!  After mid-terms, when she was still peeking looks at my answers, I finally confronted her.  “You’re cheating off me,” I said.

“I’m not stupid,” she said.  “I know who to sit next to.”

At that moment, we looked into each others’ eyes and became friends.  We decided to form a study group and went on to help each other during hours and hours of research, repetitive study and yes, even tears.  We rocked!

When we graduated from law school, Mary stood me up as class leader and friend.  I graduated with a 4.2 average (teachers were allowed to award A-pluses in some classes.)  Mary graduated with an outstanding 3.7.

Two months later, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  End of career.

Still, we stayed friends.  After brain surgery, I was able to barely manage the daunting work as a Paralegal, while Mary went on to form her own company, and start a prestigious national youth choir.  Mary’s work was exceptional and, believe me, she didn’t cheat when it came to being real.

Once a month, Mary held diversity training workshops in her home.  I attended every one.  She taught me what it was to be African American.  I taught her what it was to be white.  We never compromised … we never misinterpreted.  When she asked me to serve on the Board of Directors of her corporation, I was honored.

Her skin was my skin.

Mary then got cancer.  She lived nine more agonizing months.

Today … TODAY … I took the last picture taken of her, my dear friend — a picture of us together smiling and hugging — and I held our picture as I watched America’s first African American president receive the oath of office and give his Inaugural speech.

Today our nation took the scraps of our patchwork quilt and we stitched it together into one beautiful multi-colored, all-inclusive blanket.  We cried.  We healed.  We discovered HOPE.

We are no longer different.

So, now the real work begins.  Now the tough study group forms.  Now we take our final exam.

Now we we hold our hands together… our black and white hands, our rich and poor hands,  our Christian and Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and Atheist hands, our American and our World hands … and at last, clasped and quilted together we can say, Amen and Amen.

I’m generally not a fan of rhyming poetry.  Maybe I’m simply lazy and the work to count out meter and locate rhyme is more than my shrinking brain can handle.  (I’ve had brain surgery, you know!)  I’m a free bird kinda gal, but my admiration for the rhymers in our ranks is … well, just picture me bowing and scraping and drooling on your feet.  I guess brain tumors remove the rhyme, the meter, and leave one with a ridiculous simplicity of word and thought, as well as a wild sense of humility to go with these scraped-up knees.

Regardless its “I’m not worthy” rhyme, this poem by Robert Frost is more than lovely and, perhaps, a prayer on the lips of many in our country as they wait for spring to release them from the bondage of their icy cold.  For the final episode in my winter weather series, I give you ……..

To the Thawing Wind
by Robert Frost

Come with rain. O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
make the settled snowbank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate’er you do tonight,
bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit’s crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o’er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.

Longtime reader and friend, Dave McChesney, shared this photo of his front walkway in Spokane. 

I look out over my desert landscape and can’t imagine such a scene, such cold … such expert shovel work.  Thanks, Dave.  He says he’ll share the same view when it all melts come spring.  In the meantime, he says light fog has settled in, most likely softening the edges of this amazing scene. 

Andrew Wyeth passed on today.  One of my favorite painters; I loved his mature and enduring style, his subdued color palette, realistic renderings, and the depiction of emotionally charged symbolic objects.  His works were poetry on canvas — simple, yet they struck me through the heart.

He was often mentioned in the comic strip, Peanuts, and one of his works was hung prominently on the set of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Although there are other, perhaps more recognizable Wyeth paintings, this one is my favorite.  It’s called The Carry and today I picture Mr. Wyeth gently carried along this beautiful stream that first lived in his imagination before spilling onto his hands as he painted.

All across the country, birds have journeyed away to find warmth for their wings.  People quietly approach their fireplaces to turn the logs because there’s mystery in a fire and to let one’s voice fall over it would somehow be irreverent.  Children pretend snowmen chatter in their front lawns and trees grow blue icicles from their branches.  Winter is a time of clattering storms and silent snows.

Unless you live in the desert.  Here, the temperature is 74 degrees today.  I see bunnies congregating in my front yard and a hummingbird laps at the purple flowers just outside my office window.  We’re like an upside-down world here.  While the rest of you shovel driveways, we jog down the street in shorts and tank tops, water bottles strapped to our hips.

It’s hard for us to imagine it otherwise — your icy world, the evidence of your breath steaming from your mouths.  But then again, it’s perhaps equally hard for Northerners to envision our July, when … always … some bright kids try to fry eggs on the sidewalk and a Southern fan makes a ridiculous statement under 115 degrees.

Grace Paley’s poem, Winter Afternoon, tells me of your world.  I’m as sorry for you now, as I hope you’ll find graceful thoughts for me in July.

Winter Afternoon

by Grace Paley

Old men and women walk by my window
they’re frightened   it’s icy wintertime
they take small steps   they’re looking
at their feet   they’re glad to be
going   they hate
the necessity
sometimes the women wear heels   why
do they do this   the old women’s
heads are bent   they see their shoes
which are often pointy    these shoes
were made for crossed legs in the
evening   pointing

sometimes the old men
walk a dog   the dog moves too fast
the man stands still   the dog stands
still   the smells come to the dog
floating from the square earth of the
plane tree   from the tires of cars
at rest   all this interesting life
and adventure comes to the waiting dog
the man doesn’t know this   the street
is too icy   old women in pointy shoes
and high heels pass him   their necks
in fur collars bent   their eyes watch
their small slippery feet

If it falls from my head
and lands anywhere near my fingers,
it may end up here
or at least somewhere near here.

But if it falls from my head
while my hands are in the car, driving
from here to there,
it’s liable to be found at the side of the road.

And if it falls from my head
while I’m showering,
it’s liable to be
just another thought that’s all wet anyway.

Auburn McCanta

P.S.  Here’s a very fun site for those who are believers in fairy tales.

Wilson began today what we might think of as the equivalent to a Masters Degree program.  He’s gone through grade school, high school, college (where he received his Canine Good Citizen award) and now he’s studing to become a Service Dog.

Wilson, the hole-digging, rock-eating, leash-pulling dog!  Yes, the same dog who started this morning by eating a Poinsettia leaf, causing me to have to quickly induce vomiting (which he performed quite nicely all over the bottom of his crate and then on the family room rug).  This is going to be a Service Dog?  Oh, my.

His first lesson today was to learn to nicely heel and correctly stop.  With a loose leash.  On command, rather than when he darned well pleases.  Double oh my — Wilson keep his nose glued to my thigh and then stop when told? 

The only way I’ll get Wilson to heel in place will be to paint peanut butter on my pants.

Graduate school may be a bit harder than I envisioned. Nevertheless, we’ll continue on.  After all, we’ve ordered a snazzy red Service Dog vest with patches and everything.  Once it arrives, we’ll strap it on and head to a nice outdoor table at Starbucks.

Oh, please don’t let it be a Marley & Me moment on his first trip to the coffee shop!