We Are the Stuff of Stars

by Mimi Hedl

These winter days have an amorphous color and texture. Some people say they’re depressing and use terms like mid-west drab. This is the time of trees with bare branches, life buried under quiet earth, cedar trees offering the most color though if you look closely you see the expanding buds on the dogwoods, the parsley lush in emerald green. Or wait until sunset when the evening skies dissolve into vibrant colors unseen in spring.  Granted the landscape does not seem overly generous. I like that. Looking at winter with different eyes helps me see the patterns of bird tracks, where the neighbor’s cat has prowled, how many persimmons the critters have eaten leaving the seeds behind; the structure of a winter landscape viewed with a quiet perspective.

The decreased light creates opportunities for both crawling inside my mind and listening to it spin and spin. Not always a pleasant experience.  Recently a haunting kept me alert to the “stuff” I’ve accumulated. It was a monster under my bed, speaking, taunting me as it did when I was a child. Finally, after repeated confrontations and requests for that monster to leave me alone, I took action. I pulled out six suitcases, big suitcases, some super-sized, tucked under the beds, out of sight, out of mind for 41 years. These suitcases, filled with letters from as far back as the late 1960s, kept the mice at bay, the letters secure. But in all these years, I never once picked up a letter and re-read it. Thousands of letters. I saved them as a matter of fact. A ritual I’d go through at the end of each year. Bundle up the letters, store them, never giving thought to the day that I, or heaven forbid someone else, would have to deal with them.

I’ve had experience with overwhelming projects. They make me see stars. I want to dissolve into the ether, float away, where peace and calm reside.  I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, should I recycle everything and be done with it? My mother would do just that. In fact, she wouldn’t have saved anything. My dad would’ve saved it all and then protested when my mother said it had to go. So I approached my project in the only way I know how – organize.

I put each person’s letters in a pile. The queen-sized bed wasn’t big enough to hold the piles. Then I used boxes. I allowed myself an hour each day unless more pressing duties called. The first day I got lost in memories as I read one letter after another. Too many memories stuffed inside me all at once.  My mind spun. Voices echoed through the years. I had to have a firm stopping point to avoid unraveling.  “I’ll never finish this.”

Piles, piles everywhere! Some from family, my niece, my sisters, my daughter, my ‘other’ daughter whose letters made me burst into hysterical laughter. Letters from high school friends, college, the Ribeiros in Brazil, from grade school, gardeners I’ve met from around the world. From casual acquaintances who wrote thank you notes, old loves, my mother and father, friends I cherished who have either passed or simply passed from my life. Some memories made me sad, some made me laugh, others made me feel fortunate to have known those people. When my hour was up, I’d go outside, breathe in the cold air and refocus.

Outside I’d begun another project with accumulated stuff. The old rabbit shed where I’d stored 400 bamboo canes had a collapsed roof, right on top of the bamboo. In order to move the canes, the tin and then the lumber of the shed had to come down. It’s that old saying about how one thing leads to another.  I felt like a juggler who had lost the art and had to re-figure how to keep many things in the air. Or like with pick-up-sticks; having to decide which stick you have to move before you could move the next one. I stood in the winter cold with a blank look.

It soon became clear that deconstructing the old rabbit shed came first. That was easy once I relaxed. I called Patrick, my friend and good neighbor, and asked him to help. He said, “I could do it in 10 minutes but I suppose you want to save the wood.” (He’s seen my ‘museum’ of curated lumber.)  Of course I did. That voice spoke to me, “there you go, saving again.” Ahhh, I plead guilty. I can’t help it, I just can’t help it.

Patrick and I took our time, the nails did not give up easily.  We carefully took out each one, hammered in thirty-eight years ago, stacking the barn wood that came from Goldie’s sixty-year-old shed down in Belle, a shed Ron and I took down at Goldie’s request, forty-one years ago. Hundred year old lumber holds a special place in my heart. Patrick saw the beauty too.

Once the shed was down, the tin in a pile for Patrick to take home, the lumber sequestered in the museum, I could move the bundles of bamboo canes. No, wait a minute! Like in pick-up-sticks, I couldn’t move the bamboo until I’d moved the basket willows out of another shed because that’s where I planned on moving the bamboo. (If you’re confused, think of how the architect of this plan felt!)

This is the sad part. I’d grown, cut and bundled all those willow rods over many years. I had dreams of making many baskets. Cutting the rods in the stools took time.  I’d be down on my hands and knees in late autumn or winter, with pruners in hand, cutting rod after rod in each stool. Then I’d sort them according to length, bundle, and let cure for a year before I could then re-soak the rods and use them for making willow baskets. Like the rabbit skins I’d tanned and lost to mice with visions of making a blanket, many of the rods had deteriorated over the years, snow blowing in on them, rain falling through the holes in the tin, critters chewing on the end. An inevitable progression when life interfered with plans.

This is what happens to things we love and save. It’s the destiny of all things. The good part for me, during this process of cleaning up, letting go, was the recognition that we and everything are the stuff of stars.  Atoms and molecules simply get rearranged. It’s our minds that get in the way. We want to hold on to what went into making us who we are. And we can, but only for a while, until the time comes for those objects to rearrange themselves in a new configuration. That simple thought lightened my mood, made me release so much of what I was holding on to, inside my head and physically. I did a little jig. I appreciated my optimism when I cut those rods and dreamed of baskets I’d make, the memories the letters held, and the beauty of the weathered lumber from Goldie’s shed.

As I moved the willow rods out of the shed, I began to see how I’d use many of my saved objects. I saw a way to be the architect of the destiny of these things. I’ve promised Brother Cadfael I’d help him prepare the new garden area I’d given him. The garden’s edged by vitex shrubs on the north side and lilac shrubs on the south. In between these shrubs, brome and foxtails and other grasses grow. I’d make Brother Cadfael faux wattle-edged beds in that in between space, using the sad, old willow rods to frame the beds. Letters would cover the bare soil of each bed, cardboard over the letters, then leaves, grass clippings, compost and wood ashes as the cherry on top. I’d use the cedar pieces I’d saved for the stakes to contain the wattle fence … I was figuring it out, seeing the potential once I’d embraced the idea of reconfiguration and letting things go. And it felt wonderful!

I checked with Brother Cadfael to make sure he liked my idea. He was delighted. “You know the beds in the monastery garden had real wattle fences. Some of the young novitiates helped me weave them. The smell of willow has been dear to me. Flowers and herbs will grow in each bed. The buried richness will make them grow well. I have my memories. They’ll rest in this garden too. Thank you my friend.”

After consolidating the letters I’ll keep from those I’ll give to Cadfael’s garden, the keepers fit in two shoe boxes. The suitcases sit empty, waiting to go to thrift stores. I feel divested and free. The monster under the bed has long disappeared. I landed the final blow by opening the suitcases and releasing whatever lived inside them. People have called and written about the letters they asked me to send. One man, the son of a neighbor, was thrilled to read his mother’s letters to me. He said, “She told you things she never told me.” Another gardening friend called and made plans to come visit.

My eyes rest on more winter delights. Look at these cedar branches! Rich with beautiful berries. I watch a hairy woodpecker chase a black capped chickadee from the suet and laugh at his selfishness.  There’s a blue jay by the bird bath, pecking at the ice, telling me to bring hot water.

And you can see the process I used to create the beds in Cadfael’s garden. Still two beds to make and probably more work in the future when things don’t work out quite right. What a grand project of reconfiguration! And you dear reader, will be the only ones to know the origin of these gardens. I wish you well as you figure out how to let go of your stuff and move on. Happy New Year.