JANUARY 28 FOREVER

 

 

A grandson, born 28 January 2005

My mother, died 25 May 2005

Our son, born 28 January 1972, died 17 July 2005

Our son's only child, born oh my 29 July 2005

Swirling molecules of grief colliding with molecules of love.  

A photo, our son, a tall man with soft light brown hair 

Worn long in front--now bald from chemotherapy--

Holding high his nephew with the downy scalp, 

Matching bald head for bald head. 

Our son looks quizzical. 

Then his daughter a healthy baby, punk-style strawberry blonde hair. 

A nurse asked: "Is the new mother your daughter?"  

"No, she's my daughter-in-law." 

"Oh, I'm so sorry," touching my arm. 

Twelve days after our son's death, his daughter closed the circle. 

Our daughter-in-law went from nursing a husband to nursing a baby,

Flush with new-mother hormones asking God "why?"

The day of the funeral I held the grandson born just six months earlier. 

Our daughter handed him to me, knowing I needed to stay upright.  

I focused on his silky soft head (99th percentile, his father bragged). 

By six months this baby already saving a life.

Our son's daughter has filled the family with joy and admiration

For over 20 years now.

Praise God, she has never shared our grief, 

Although he has her own knowledge of loss.

When she holds out her arms for an embrace, 

No person is luckier than I.  

Now on January 28, it is my grandson who I awake thinking of. 

In the midst of this remembrance of love and sadness, 

I get a call from our granddaughter.  

"It is Daddy's birthday," she says, "I am thinking of you." 

How can she know I need her voice today?  

We are home with the flu snowed in and feverish.

She drives partway up our icy drive, then walks the rest of the way

Carrying a bag of cough medicine and spicy Peruvian chicken.

She leaves it all on the back stoop, taps on the window and waves.

We have enough chicken, rice, beans and Robitussin to last. 

The hardest year is long over.  We survived it.  

Our daughter-in-law stayed a widow for ten years, 

Until that no longer seemed right, 

Then married the man our granddaughter calls Dad.  

But Daddy is still our son, 

A man who has filled her with his tenderness of spirit. 

More than any other feeling, I feel lucky and blessed.  

I feel God's gifts in my marriage, in the snow softly falling again.   

In Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) said, 

"I can't go on.  I'll go on."  

And so we have. 

 

WHAT I SEE FROM HERE, June 27, 2026

 

Windy Day at the Beach

The chairs are sliding across the deck today, the tops of the live oak and holly fighting with each other just at railing-height and white caps not constant, but enough, all the way to the horizon.  Isolated thunderstorms my weather app says with gusts up to 13 mph and 82℉.  Warm, not hot at 82℉, not hot till 90℉ or above, not hot till sweltering really.  We are used to heat. When we lived in London many years ago, days the 80s brought headlines of "Heat Wave."  In North Carolina, days in the 80s are lovely, appreciated, time to eat outdoors, open the windows or at home, wade in the Eno River that weaves itself through Durham. 

Maybe because I grew up in St. Louis in a big old house with just two window units, no AC in my bedroom, and walked our small neighborhood to the public pool in the steamiest of weather, maybe that's why hot days seem natural to me: slick skin, warm bones, yesterday sweat in my eyes as I worked in the yard here with the sound of the waves just beyond.   

In summer the beaches in North Carolina can get so hot, the sand burns--bare feet, dog paws.  We have to walk near the water's edge on wet sand, tide going out or coming in ankle deep sloshing, maybe looking for olives as I walk, or augers or lady slippers, finding pools of shells--not the big ones, not conchs or horseshoe crabs.  A conch will appear all alone on a swath of wet sand.  But the little guys, they pool like water. You can sit in a pool of shells for a long time, just moving them this way and that with your fingers and spying the tiniest of dove shells or mudsnails for your collection.  

Not on a day like today with isolated thunderstorms when the lightening over the ocean can be scary-beautiful and comes so fast there's no time at all.  But other days.  I have a tall glass jar of augurs I took from my mother's back porch after she moved to a nursing home for her last weeks.  I picture her squatting in a pool of shells with a good eye for these tiny carnivores, thinner than a fingernail and swirled (like an auger of course!), with a small opening at one end for their foot to come out.  What a miracle, I'm thinking writing this.  

What a miracle that at my age I am at the beach (again), tending to the needs of this also now-old-house that we built in 1995 to be just 2 miles down the beach from my retired parents in their rented condo.  This topsy-turvy beach house on stilts with the kitchen and living area on the third floor and no elevator, that is now quite a trek for me with armloads of groceries or a cooler.  This basically perfect place and perfect time of my life--that is how a week at the beach can make you feel.  Thankful, yes? Restored. Happy.  

And of course it doesn't have to be the beach.  We all have a place.  Yours may be a high-rise condo somewhere. Or like friends whom it is hard not to envy--an apartment in Paris.  Or like neighbors in Durham, a well-cared-for garden for tea.  Or neighbors on the other side, a cabin and vegetable garden. My St. Louis cousin and her husband have down-sized to an apartment near their son that is giving them great peace-of-mind and is a new urban adventure. The Simple Things, that UK magazine I treasure every month, has a feature on favorite places.  Some months a reading nook, some a peaceful bathroom filled with plants, some a window with a view or a charming backyard gazebo. Readers contribute and tell why this spot relaxes or grounds them, or transposes a bad day to a good. 

I've wandered far from the chairs sliding across the deck and the wind has let up some now.  Thank you for staying with me.  Are you thinking now about your favorite place, or where you would like to create one?  Tell me in a comment if you wish.  These are lovely things to share.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

YOUR ONE LIFE MAY NOT BE WILD

 

June 2026

I'm giving too much to this world 

Well, not the world perhaps, but the news

Well, not the news perhaps

But the tiny man who dominates the news

That tiny man:  tiny heart, tiny brain, tiny thoughts  

So I swam today, back and forth, right stroke, left stroke, breathe

Turn, push off, kick, hold my breath, float

Look at the sky, clouds, leaves, blue white green overhead

North Carolina tall straight trunks, bending boughs

 Lizards hanging about looking for water

We've had a drought, many weeks without rain

Squirrels bedraggled, thin, weak perhaps, not playful

I don't miss them, they topple my plants

The deer are skinny too, as if it were winter, keeping deep in the forest

I don't think they are nesting under the cedars, their usual spot

The meadow brown, clipped and not inviting, nowhere to shelter  

We don't see their morning or evening pattern, too hot, too dry

Or the geese, haven't heard a honk 

But the pool, the pool was nice, cool even at 85 degrees with the heat over 100

Something for which I am always grateful, happy, having a pool

Wet hair now, a glass of white wine, fresh clothes, shorts and top

Is it true, the older we get, the more precious Life is?  

Each lizard, each wren (we're keeping the bird baths full)

The blue hydrangea I'm nursing through the drought

Encouraging them with water and word

(Yes, I talk to my plants, the trees, the boulders grand enough  to serve a buffet )

The salvia and sage, hellebore, marigold, begonia, lantana I water from our well

We had an Anniversary recently

A few friends and family

 We've been married a long time  

I can tell you for sure and you can believe me 

Your one Life may not be wild, but precious it is

                                                            Nina Naomi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD (John 18:36)

 

Trinity Episcopal, Santa Barbara

"If you will trust in God to guide you, and hope in God through all your ways, God will give you strength what 'ere betide you, and bear you through the evil days." (l7th century hymn)

I didn't awake this Sunday morning thinking of God. I began it on my phone reading what we needn't call news anymore because there is nothing new about it:  the Epstein Files, the Strait of Hormuz that I couldn't have located before we bombed Iran, the southern states that are gerrymandering Black voters out of representation now that the Supreme Court majority has reversed the Civil Rights Act, the billionaire grifters ruining/running the country, the liquidation of the United States . . . .  See, not news.  

Then we went to church, the church we are visiting while we are here in Santa Barbara, California.  And the words from a hymn written over 300 years ago about evil days brought everything into focus.  God will "bear you through the evil days."  My morning read was about nothing but evil days.  

We sang the rest of the hymn.  "So do your own part faithfully, and trust God's Word" we continued. I'm not sure what was going on in the 1650s, but today that must mean live out our faith in strength, working for what is just and right for all of us.  I felt like the hymn was speaking to me:  trust in God, hope in God, and do your own part faithfully.  

This seems simple, doesn't it?  Trust, don't lose hope, and follow the commandments.  

I read Engaged Defenders 4 Democracy, ED4D, on Substack.  A Durham based state-wide advocacy group for democracy.  I can't claim to be an active participant in the daily demonstrations across our state.  But I can sign my name, phone, spread the word and donate.  Maybe I/we can help keep hope alive, the mantra popularized by the late Rev. Jesse Jackson in his electrifying speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention that I listened to again today. The man who, sounding a lot like Jesus, said that his Rainbow Coalition was of "the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised." The man who gave us the rainbow as the symbol of inclusivity. 

The Communion Anthem was one we sing often at my home church in North Carolina:  "Let us Break Bread Together on our Knees."  The Blessing was adapted from the Rev. William Sloane Coffin (1924-2006), who prior to his ordination was a CIA officer (I didn't know), which lends a new credibility to his prayer "the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth." 

When I began the morning with the "news," I did not expect or want the journalists to lament the breaking of the Ten Commandments by the regime; or to note its sinful disregard of "Love your neighbor as yourself."  What we want from the free press now under siege, are the facts unadulterated by threats from a political party. We want a separation of church and state.  That separation allows the church to speak truth to power, from the pulpit and from the pew. 

Yes, from the pulpit and from the pew, the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth.  Too small for anything but love.  Attending worship is always a gift.  It is where we hear "You have the words of Eternal Life." Nowhere else.  

Where we are this month, the ocean and mountains remind of the eternality of things.  But so does the Gospel.  Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36). No, but in this world we must keep the commandments, trust, hope and do our own part faithfully. Praise be to God.  AMEN

 

 

 

 

MAY GRAY IN SANTA BARBARA

Fog Lifted, Clear Night

 Not on little cat feet, no, but everyday

The fog floats over the wavy lines of Santa Ynez 

Seen out the window disappeared.

The city too, no valley, no mountain, no horizon;

All obscured by mist.

We could be anywhere.

We could be in the arctic, blinded by snow

Or in a sandstorm.

We could be asleep dreaming, no place no time,

Only close, close the bougainvillea visible,

The water in the fountain heard.

The doves nibbling seed, the woodpeckers the suet.

Can there be an ocean near? The cliffs? The thousand stairs? 

Maybe later, maybe then the city lights shine 

In the valley below this house on a hill

Where we live now this short time happy in the fog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CALIFORNIA THOUGHTS

 While we've been out in California (new reader, North Carolina is our home), I feel like we've visited some of the most beautiful places on earth.  I could be exaggerating, you might say, if you've been in Switzerland, or Fiji, or the Bavarian Alps or the Norwegian fjords.  Where else?  Upstate New York maybe, the Great Lakes, Costa Rica, the American West.  But to me the California coast is a wonder.  One of the best parts is that it is accessible; Hwy 1 (State Route 1) travels up and down the Pacific coast, a kind of harrowing drive actually, according to my husband who did most of the driving. 

At 656 miles, it is second longest State Route in the U.S.  The Big Sur section, from San Luis Obispo to Carmel, is designated a national scenic by-way and we drove the whole thing the other day. It was breathtaking, over and over again. 

Cliff Top homes, Carmel

Point Lobos, Carmel

Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur

Whenever I travel I think about people who were born and raised there.  People for whom this view, this culture, this climate, is what they are used to.  I remember on our honeymoon we had saved every penny to budget-travel Western Europe.  We were in a Zimmer Frei, a room in someone's house available to let. Pre-internet, you would hop off the train and look for a Zimmer Frei sign in a window.  

 

I had barely ever left the Midwest and here we were in Interlaken, in the Swiss Alps with a spray of cold mountain air freshening the streets and outside tables.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to be born here, I thought.  To have my brother and parents and friends here and we knew how to ski and raise goats and we picked Alpine meadow flowers in spring.

 

What if Big Sur weren't someplace you traveled across country to see, but a place you came for picnics on weekends and school holidays?  Do you ever have imaginings like that?  Maybe everyone does, thinks of other lives in other places.  And some are able to make that happen, relocate somewhere exotic or special to them.  

 

My husband and I are too satisfied, too deep into our North Carolina lives to move. That's always been true of some of us, hasn't it?  We like to travel but we love to be home.  Our reality is actually as good or better than any fantasy.  I don't think this is sour grapes (you know, Aesop's fable where the hungry fox decides that the grapes he cannot reach must be sour and not worth eating).  It's healthy to be satisfied.  Smart to admire something but not want it.  Energizing to appreciate some thing, some place, and move on.

 

So, sour grapes notwithstanding, here are a few of the places I am loving and from which, in just 16 more days, we will move on. I hope you enjoy the photos, that they bring up some of your own travel memories.

 

The View from Nepenthe, Big Sur

Back Garden Orange Trees

A long walk down . . . Santa Barbara

Giraffe with an ocean view. Santa Barbara Zoo

 

With all these photos, I feel like this has been a self-indulgent post. I.e., giving me more pleasure than it may give you.  But we do all need breaks from the regime that is too much with us, the crazy-tweeter too much with us, and his exploitive billionaire cohorts too much everywhere.  So, thank you for taking this break with me.    Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MEMORIES OF HOMES

 Is there one place you have lived that you love more than any other?  Is it because of the place, the time or the people?  I may be thinking about this because we are living in our friends' home in Santa Barbara, California.  I have been posting about this.  They have a view of the mountains.  None of my own homes has ever been in a setting like this. 

My life is more prosaic.  Our North Carolina home is mid-century modern with trees and a meadow. Lots of privacy but always needing clean-up and repair.  Fallen branches, flooding creek, piles of debris.  Deer ticks and humidity.  A lovable place in every way, but hard to keep up.  Here, "seems it never rains in southern California," as the song goes.  So as house-sitters, we are watering desert-like pot plants that sit on a pebbled patio (no grass of course).  I never knew how vibrant bougainvillea are. 

Where do you live?  Overlooking a city street?  Traffic sounds out front?  Do you have a balcony to lean over?  Can you wave when a neighbor walks by?  Or is it swings and a sandbox in the back yard for you?  Have you been able to make all the places you've lived feel like home?

Where we have lived in Princeton, New Jersey for short stints, the bathroom window abuts the sidewalk where the kids line up for their school bus.  The kitchen door opens to a fire escape and laundry is in a moldy basement.  But with plants, pillows and fairy lights it's a super place to live.  I could make that home.

Where we stay in London, we carry our laundry to the basement across the street.  Years ago when we lived there as international students, we were all young and having babies.  Decades later we lived in a colleague's apartment in Zimbabwe while our London-born daughter taught in Lebowa, South Africa. Twice a week a woman washed our few clothes in the bathtub and swept the worn carpet with a broom. I remember all these places with affection.

I think about people who have lived in the same place forever.  Maybe that's you.  My best friend from childhood-to-now, has lived in our native state her whole life. Her children and grandchildren too. Same with my favorite cousin who is like an older sister. I can't help but think that because their friendships are longer, they must be deeper than mine. Deeper connections with place, with the history around them.

The other thing about homes, though, is they aren't just places of comfort.  We all know that tragedies happen in our homes.  Bad news.  Hurtful discoveries.  Facts that won't disappear.  Words that can't be unspoken:  forgiven, yes, but not unsaid.  Where love is greatest, emotional distress is too. Our beloved pets die.  Our parents die.  A spouse, a partner and yes, even a child may die.  So home isn't just a refuge.  It's where we get bad news as well as good.  We have fights there.  We get hurt there.  We crawl inside our closets and hide our scars. Home is not such a simple place after all.

The sayings about home are interesting. Is home people or a place?  I don't have a single friend in London, but the city myself is my friend.  I know the bus routes and alleyways, the neighborhood restaurants.  I can shelter in a museum or cafe. Many of us have a favorite city.  

Robert Frost (1874-1963) says, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."  That may be true if our parents are alive.  Or a brother or sister or friend who loves us.  But not everyone has a place like that.  The greatest scourge is homelessness.

British poet Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) says that winter is the time for home--good food, comfort and warmth.  But so are the other seasons, we might say.  I am here in our friends' home in spring.  That too is a time for home, when we might grow with the season.  Or summer, when the sun warms our souls and bodies. Or fall, when the reds and yellows remind us of death and rebirth.

My widowed father lived in his home until two weeks before he died at age 94.  By that time home was a small apartment in a retirement community where he had spent the last ten years. He enjoyed it as much as any home where he had ever lived: company, good food, activities and just 10 minutes from me.  May we all be so fortunate.

Thoughtfully, Nina Naomi