Mourning, Dove

There’s much to be said

For the roof o’er my head,

For the groceries, the skillets, the dishes

It’s not always fun

But when day is done

It’s a good life, being the Mrs.

No longer with rocks,

I’m washing his socks

And the rest of the laundry in style

While capturing frames

And looking up names

Some visit only once in a while.

They’re gold, shades of gray,

Red, brown and blue jay,

They soar on the winds with abandon.

Unconfined, in their space

Wings that beat, hearts that race

With a joy I can only imagine.

Signs of the Times

I wonder if things that are meaningful  to us – signs, if you will – change with time.  I can’t recall any recurring “things” in my early life but maybe I was too busy running and BEING, to have noticed them.  Maybe I just wasn’t in the right place.

When contemplating chucking our life on Long Island and starting over at age 40 I was uncertain, thus vulnerable.  And, open.  Standing at the screen door of our 20’ X 24’ cabin in the Pennsylvania woods, I considered  the right ‘move’; my heart  was at home in the woods but my brain questioned leaving what we had achieved and become in New York.  A strange buzzing noise greeted me from the other side of the screen. In the darkness of a wooded twilight, the green thing that flew towards me seemed like a crazy-big locust.  I came to learn, it was my first experience with a hummingbird.

Two years later in Pennsylvania, after job hunting without success for weeks, alone and wondering if our choice had been the right one, I set out to put in a garden. With a shovel and pick-ax, I tried to dig out a row.  The boulder-rich, glacial terra firma was impossible. My harvest of rocks would far exceed any vegetable harvest, I lamented.  The more I used that pick and shovel, the more my back hurt, the more I struggled with my choice.

 After two weeks at hard labor, I was gutted. Physically and emotionally spent, dirt and tears streaming down my face, I caved in to the doubt and fear. Nothing was going right. I shouldn’t have made this move.  And then, without having made a sound, a ruby-throated jade gem hovered at my side.  Just hovered … looking at me. 

My heart soared at the realization that it was a hummingbird, and only the second one I had ever seen. That initial sighting was my first such ‘sign’  I was on the right path.  I was supposed to be here!!  And so, I ordered a truckload of dirt for the garden area.  Yeah, I was supposed to be here, but I didn’t have to do battle with rocks (aside from those in my head) to get on with my new life.

It’s been over 20 years since then. I have embraced raised-bed gardening – increasing my yields, growing new things and learning new techniques with each season. The hummingbirds are a constant in my life, from April into September. I never grow tired of them and spend hours watching, feeding, photographing and talking to them. I know their ‘voice’ now, and the sound of the beating wings so that I often hear their presence before I see them.  I’ve only seen the ruby-throated hummers so it is on my bucket list, to travel enough to see other varieties.  But I am grateful that I have these jewels in my life –  I had spent over a score of years in Florida and another dozen+  in New York without ever having seen one. Their appearance signals Spring in full bloom in my neck of the woods.

January in Florida happened quite by accident this year.  My Dad took ill and I was compelled to go down to be with him and my Mother. It wasn’t an easy decision in the dead of winter, to leave my life in Pennsylvania.  It isn’t easy being with my Dad as his health fails, or intruding in the routine of my Mother’s everyday life.  I wondered if I had made a wise choice although I knew I was needed there.  Sitting on the porch outside their home, I heard the familiar chirp and the humming of the wings.  In 17 years living at that house, my folks had never seen a hummingbird.  In fact, they’d never seen one at all except on my own front porch in Pennsylvania some 10 years ago. 

Not wanting to move, I wished my Dad could see this little blessing. The door of the house opened, and Dad with his walker, pushed himself out to join me on the porch. I told him about the hummingbird, he was incredulous.  And then, she appeared again, visiting the hibiscus flowers.  

Dad saw and heard that second visit; he spent another ½ hour outside with me talking and laughing with a vitality I hadn’t seen in months.  I told him it was a sign.  Two weeks later, sitting alone back at home in the woods, I’ve had a chance to relive that moment. I have pictures to go with the memories … not the best photographs I’ve ever taken but some of the finest I will ever possess.  And in retrospect, I realize I was right, that hummer was a sign.  To me.  I was right where I was supposed to be. 

The Cat's Whisker

It's that time in my own life, when things are happening that are far beyond my capabilities to control. Not that I really am able to control anything except the choices I make, but I think we all hope to be able to exercise SOME control in situations that affect our hearts, our families, our own sense of what is right and wrong.  I have been turning to my crystals quite often, to help me steady my emotions, gain some strength and clarity, and channel my own energies towards the positive when so much around me is negative.  

I made my Dad a string of healing and energy stones, and an amulet bag for Christmas. He asked my sister, if she believed in that stuff.  I think, he thinks I'm a little "out there"; his leather pouch and string of crystals and stones remains in the tin on the table by his recliner.  I wish he would get it out and just hold it, I think he would feel the vibrations and know the energies that are contained in that string of beads. In my heart, I KNOW he understands there is a power to the crystals, because he told me about his early use of crystals to receive radio waves and listen to the Grand Ole Opry! 

Daddy was always a 'mechanical engineer'.  He told stories of his early life in Bedford, Pennsylvania. A child of the 1920's, growing up in the Great Depression and in a family of little means, using one's intelligence and mechanical abilities helped make life a little better. They had no money for things like radios, but Daddy was always, it seemed, influenced by music. So he fabricated a receiver from crystals and wire, to pick up radio frequencies without benefit of a radio.  This early form of receiver, was called the "Cat's Whisker". So, Dad ... this 'thing' I have about crystals, energy & life forces --- it's really all your fault  ♥

from Wikipedia, "From the earliest wireless telegraphy days of radio, well into the age of commercial AM broadcasting, unamplified radio receivers were powered only by the radio energy they picked up through their antennas. The crystal radio was the most widely used of these. Manufactured and homemade by the millions, it helped introduce radio to the public, contributing to the development of radio from an experimental hobby to an entertainment medium around 1920. After about 1920, receivers using crystal detectors were largely superseded by the first amplifying receivers, which used vacuum tubes. These did not require the fussy adjustments that crystals required, were more sensitive, and also were powerful enough to drive loudspeakers. Nevertheless, the expense of the early vacuum tubes and the batteries needed to run them meant that the crystal detector remained in commercial and military use for almost a decade more. However, by the late 1920s, radios using crystal detectors were relegated to use by hobbyists and youth groups and have been used by them as educational devices to the present day.

The point-contact semiconductor detector was subsequently resurrected around World War II because of the military requirement for microwaveradar detectors. Vacuum-tube detectors do not work at microwave frequencies. The small area of the point contact minimized minority carrierstorage and capacitance, making these diodes fast enough to function at radar frequencies. Silicon and germanium point-contact diodes were developed. Wartime research on p-n junctions in crystals paved the way for the invention of the point-contact transistor in 1947.

The germanium diodes that became widely available after the war proved to be as sensitive as galena and did not require any adjustment, so they replaced cat's whisker detectors in the few crystal radios still being made, largely putting an end to the manufacture of this antique radio component. Although cat's whisker detectors are obsolete, modern point-contact silicon detectors are still commercially produced.^[ Thus, the point-contact method used to make these first semiconductor diodes 100 years ago is still being used today."