Lately I have been having some trouble with my eyes. For decades -- more than four of them if you must know -- I was the lone person in my biological family not to wear glasses. Glasses were something, actually, that I kind of coveted, going so far as to try and sport a pair with non-prescription lenses just to rock the look a smidge.
Oh, how I rue my youthful dabbling with eyewear as accessory, thinking they made me look smart or more interesting or whatever silly idea I had in my head.
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One of my favorite things -- besides free books -- is GREAT books.
To be clear: an all-caps GREAT book first totally hooks me, makes me want to call in sick just so I can luxuriate all day in its pages, second ruins me for all other books for a while.
A GREAT book obsesses me. I read everything I can about the author, I Like their Facebook page, follow their Twitter feed, watch interviews, go listen to them read if I can. I talk about it to anyone who will listen.
So listen: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a GREAT book.
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Two new jars of honey appeared on the kitchen counter last week. Not exactly by magic -- my husband had left them there after getting home from work, just before slipping out with the dog for a little walk around the neighborhood. The jars have a generic label on them, no name. The honey is a gorgeous perfect honey color.
But of course, my first thought was:
Why is anyone giving us, of all people, honey?
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The other night I had the good fortune to attend a reading by Virginia Morell, whose Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures was just published. There, in the darkened corner of Book Passage in Corte Madera where we listened to Virginia and watched her slide show, I tried and mostly failed to keep the tears back.
Tears of elation, really: among the animal nerds, I am with my people.
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My Mother's Day was my favorite probably since 4 years ago when a swarm landed in our apple tree -- I was outside from 9 until 2:30, happily busy about the garden, moving lightly from task to task. It's a little funny to say out loud how much I loved the day, since I spent it neither with my own mother nor with my own child, but alas, these ARE the true confessions of a Country Mouse.
Yesterday was all about clippin' and flippin'. Compost, that is.
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I mucked up my freshly-laundered bathrobe (again) this morning, so impatient to be outside that I didn't change into my usual gardening garb.
From the sidewalk, I'm sure I was a sight: bed-head, flannel robe and tevas, gloves and clippers -- but probably all the passers-by are used to it, expect to see us in various states of (un)dress, happily playing in the dirt. I like to think they give us the Eccentric Green-Thumbed Neighbor pass, in return for the glory of this plot of land, cultivated and shared year after year.
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It's light now at close to 5:30 am, which is just about the best thing ever.
While YES, I've had spring fever for a while now, nothing gives me the incipient summer madness like this early morning light.
This is when I start dashing outside before 6, to see what wonders have transpired overnight, to check before it's hot-as-blazes on who grew and how much yesterday.
And always the question: are the bees flying yet?
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It does feel like I've been broadcasting from the Doom & Gloom Channel for weeks now -- sending out a fairly unbroken stream of hopeful but still bleak news. It's been death, suffering and more death.
And for weeks I've been bare-eyed to meet the day, knowing that otherwise within moments I'd be Alice Cooper.
No more.
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One week ago today, my youngest sister passed away after years of cancer and illness. She was a brilliant person who changed dramatically in the final years of her life, away from the person we knew into some other creature with a different family and a desire not to know us.
To say the last four years have been painful is an understatement.
And so her death, finally, was a relief in many ways -- relief that she no longer suffers, relief that her 6-year-old daughter no longer witnesses her wasting away, relief that my family at last grieves in earnest instead of wracking our brains for how to fix the broken.
For me, the Country Mouse, naturally on that day a week ago, I found solace in the dirt.
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Carla Marcella Trélaün Tocci
January 16, 1969 – April 22, 2013
Our beloved Carla rests with the angels. After a long battle with glioblastoma, she left this world peacefully, her devoted husband Sidino by her side.
A San Francisco native, Carla went to the French American Bilingual School, Everett Junior High, Lowell High School and San Francisco State University, where she earned her BFA in Painting and Ceramics. She delighted in her French heritage, working for many years as a server at La Folie, combining her love of language and fine food. Carlita was an artist through and through, whether it was her buche de noel covered with perfect little meringue mushrooms, marzipan animals, and frosting swirled like bark, or baskets of delicately perfect Christmas cookies, or painting, or ceramics. She had the enviable ability to do everything well.
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