DELICATE MATTER
It’s been raining for weeks, interrupted by a few minutes of sun now and then. There is something about days and weeks of rain that seems to dissolve time and, for a while, this feels comforting; the way a sigh can signal relief. Time blurred by precipitation allows us to curl up by the fire with a good book from whose pages one looks up and out to see if the rain is holding steady, and yes, it is.
But what at first is comforting sooner or later becomes oppressive.There was a reprieve some three weeks ago by another from of precipitation…snow. Two day of gentle accumulation that not so much transformed the landscape as much as rendered it shamelessly more beautiful by reducing a multiplicity of texture down to essential form and further reducing the inherent tranquility to suspended silence.
For a while, gardeners and farmers alike were heartened to see the rivers swell and the earth, so thirsty from last summer, finally being quenched. Between precipitation and a series of hard frosts over the winter, we were all getting a bit cocky projecting a luscious spring followed by a bountiful summer. When exactly, does a good thing become too much of a good thing? Where is the line between comfort and oppression? And when is enough, not enough?
Balance; such a simple concept, yet not always easy to achieve. Balance depends on extremes, without which there would be no need to, well, to find a balance. The tricky thing is understanding that balance isn’t always linear; that is to say, a middle point between two ends. Think of what it takes for an infant to stand without falling, never mind learning to walk. Or, how about learning to ride a bike, which at first takes extreme concentration to achieve balance and which eventually becomes second nature. Hundreds of messages have to be delivered from brain to limb every time we walk or bike and, unless some medical condition robs us of that ability, we are able to do these things completely unaware of what it takes to do so. It would seem that only when second nature is threatened by illness do we stop taking certain miraculous abilities for granted.
My dear Joel turned 80 on 6th March and we celebrated him in grand style. For six months it was my honor to plot and scheme, bringing together 60 friends and family members. All together we represented 12 nations: England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Russia, Japan, South Africa and America. Our common bond being our love for Joel and, as was evident on the night, our love for each other. The party took place in C/O Berlin, the museum that housed Joel’s retrospective for three months (it closed 3 days after his birthday). The night was filled with flair, moving tributes, a PowerPoint presentation of Joel’s life, literally, from infancy until now. There was laughter and fine food, Vaudevillian props, a few tears, the gift of a tenor sax and red balloons, an awesome band, outrageous dancing and cake with the full count of 80 candles. And, unlike the rain, none of us ever wanted it to end.
But back to balance. As I was going into the final week of preparations, someone close to me became very ill and suddenly, what had been joyous became stressful. Until the last day I didn’t know if I would have to choose between being in Berlin or flying to the one who was ill. The stress of those two events coinciding knocked me off balance. Medication that I take daily to compensate for a failed thyroid doesn’t come with the ability to balance itself the way a functioning thyroid is able to. It is one of the many systems in our bodies that when not in balance, sends a lot of other systems off kilter. As a result, by the time I came home from Berlin my adrenal system was crashing. Put simply, the adrenals when function properly give us the ability to make it through stressful periods. When they are not at full capacity, too much stress puts a person in a constant state of panic.
So, coming home to rain felt like a blessing. Never one to pay heed to the need to recover, the rain made it impossible for me to become a maniac in the spring garden. I could barely walk from the bed to the couch. Riding a bike would have been a joke.We like to think of nature as having it’s own sense of balance, but industrialization and consumerism have poisoned nature to the degree that it now goes from one extreme to the other without every finding its balance. This we are witnessing in our beloved Tuscany. When the rains first started, we marveled at how nature was compensating for last year’s crop-killing drought. But like a system gone haywire, it no longer knows when to stop. The earth has become more than a foot deep in mud making it impossible for the farmers to sow. Roots are in danger of becoming waterlogged which could lead to rot. On top of this we are forecast to have two nights of frost this week, just as everything is sprouting tender new leaves and shoots.
Yet I do believe in nature’s ability to recover...both our own and that of the land. It, like us, might have to adapt to a new way of being. We might have to suffer extremes in order to be grateful for the delicate balance we call life.
With love, Maggie
