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built in the early 1950s and the woman who lived here for much of her life was much older she passed away in the fall in the year before our family moved in our neighbors tell us stories of witness she was kind and she was also not kind lately we are becoming the sort of people who uproot and trim and shape i hope we are kind but maybe we are not the best judges of our own characters i am rarely certain what is weed and what is precious from the perspective of a dandelion i am ruthless cruel maybe those brilliant yellow beauties deserve better when i was younger a lost traveler in my 20s and living in japan i was taught the term hanakotoba the language of flowers each flower holds a meaning and intention a character or some quality as it is passed from one person to another i found that i t is the very old who carry this knowledge and i learned of it such a long time ago perhaps so many years later it is mostly forgotten so that certain beauty exists now without a context i wonder if the woman who lived in our house at some moment in mid life as i am now was ever compelled to bend down to examine a small blue flower if somehow she could hear a whispered word through that trajectory of time that suggestion of a history or of a future wasurenagusa wasurenagusa wasurenagusa her children loud and laughing tumbling amongst the greenery around her a cloudless blue sky above maybe we are all just accidental gardeners we look after what we are given or what we create we tend it well or we do not in this way a garden moves through the seasons and never forgets the dirt beneath our fingernails sticky sap against our wrists share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized jun 03 past lives posted by tracy franz 9 her fingers small delicate digits weave a complicated pattern in the air as she tells the day s secrets to an audience of dolls my daughter in a world of her own i can t translate her movements all her emphatic whisperings what i would give to understand to see as she sees i step away from her doorway away from the doting mother s pause and enter into some bubble of memory as i gather and straighten fold and tuck in a previous life for much of my youth and then for a brief time at university i was a flautist i had felt that it was my one connection to the divine and that in itself strangely was eventually painful enough to make me quit forever i did not feel worthy felt broken by my bad choices a beautiful thing a carefully polished silver sinking slowly into shit and so i walked away but for years and years after my fingers still moved through a favorite riff while standing in line at the grocery store or at the post office while perusing poetry in a used bookshop as i stood in a doorway and watched my first husband getting into a car with a woman he had been seeing sakura i must have learned it in junior high held it like a talisman against my constant misery this was before i knew anything of japan or of the brief lives of its most sacred blossoms certain memory they say are now saying is written in the dna is passed down to our offspring through chemical markers the smell of a certain flower for instance at the moment of the mother s injury in her youth some trauma to the body or the heart will then trigger a reaction in the future daughter upon encountering the same flower in this way we are echoed constantly into the future as if the color of our eyes the texture of our hair the shape and length of our limbs were not enough i don t know if this is a tragic or merely poignant scientific revelation there must be layers of complexity that we can and cannot see there are the variables unable to grasp it all we follow the distilled and careful line of scientific method follow that singular thread of truth in and out of an eternal weave and what of the ethics of it all should we now aim to have children before an accumulation of hurt or later when we have both an abundance of loss but also a better understanding of it which is the better legacy what will and will not translate across time and dna now my daughter stands watching me with curious eyes from my own bedroom doorway as my fingers move through air sakura yes still there in the body memory of sinew muscle bone she laughs and enters the room to makes a game of it lifts her hands to play along with me our duet our genetic symphony share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized sep 05 this old house posted by tracy franz 2 it s got good bones that s what the inspector said when we visited the house we had decided we wanted to buy i liked that phrase liked the idea the house as body as a being maybe it was this metaphor that sold me on the place despite the inevitable decay of flesh there remains the permanence of bone for a house i am told good bones are essential for an easy rebirth remove a wall change out the windows update light fixtures switch out a pink toilet or sink strip the ancient wallpaper add a few coats of paint and voilà the dead can live again it s a humbling process something worthy of reverence opa my grandfather on my mother s side had been a contractor i wonder what he would have thought of our new place the house he shared with my oma in thomaston texas sprawled like a body at rest along the banks of the guadalupe river really theirs was not so much one house as a series of interconnecting homes that lived and breathed as one it had started as nothing more than a modest single wide two tiny bedrooms one on each end a kitchen dining area a bathroom from that center it grew to extend out into a palatial sitting room overlooking the river each summer when my mother and i visited from alaska it seemed a new limb had grown a wing or walkway or deck or room or carport from my opa s wise and weathered hands the house was constantly being reborn even now i can t begin to recall how many forms it inhabited over the years when my mother and i returned home to alaska at the end of each summer it stayed with me that house it lived on in my dreams as a living entity so that i spent my days exploring the expansive reality of the north and my nights within my opa s southern subconscious in this way i often lived between two worlds a habit or predisposition for contextual schism that followed me into adult life when i was in high school it became necessary for my grandparents to move to a small suburban home in kerrville i remember sipping sugar sweet iced tea and watching my opa a builder of worlds trying to repair an old broken telephone he sat at the kitchen table for an hour plugging the phone into itself over and over listening expectantly into the receiver after each try his hands worn but no longer wise strokes take things away explained my mother later my opa by then was having several episodes a month maybe more i imagined his guadalupe river house his architectural masterpiece but in the reverse a room or a corridor collapsing again and again into absence into nothing when opa died and then oma a few weeks later i was in my mid twenties and at the center of my own terrible collapse a world falling in on itself when i finally woke up i lived in a new country in a new context entirely i felt that all my original houses were erased forever it was then that i first began to feel free and that s okay i think it s okay to let go to burn it all down and rebuild from the ground up but lately in this new old house i am beginning to see my opa in every square angle in every raw beam good bones they say from loss within impermanence the persistence of memory share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized aug 01 mother s day flowers posted by tracy franz 0 it is may 8 2010 the day before mother s day and i am in takamori japan with my one year old son s hand in mine carefully ascending the stone steps to the gate of my husband s teacher s temple we are here to celebrate hanamatsuri or the festival of flowers otherwise known as the buddha s birthday as we enter the garden i see that the sliding doors encircling the main building are open to fresh countryside air a number of families have already settled on their cushions around a statue of the baby buddha standing beneath a flower covered canopy soon the children will be invited to pour sweet tea brewed from the leaves of hydrangea over the likeness bathing it as tenderly as a real newborn in this way the boys and girls are encouraged briefly to step into the parental role an exercise in compassion and generosity today as i reflect on the first year of caring for my own child i can t help but recall the fantastical story of the buddha s birth and of his mother at the foot of the himalayas the honorable king suddhodana ruled over the sakyas warrior tribe on the night of a full moon suddhodana s wife the virtuous queen maya dreamt of a white elephant clutching a lotus flower in its trunk her dream was later interpreted and it was foretold that she would give birth to a son who would come to be great in one of two ways if he remained in the castle with his family he would be a conqueror of nations if he left he would become wise beyond all measure some months later the queen was riding in a palanquin to her parents home where she intended to give birth when she ordered her procession to stop and rest in a beautiful garden as she entered the grove of flowering trees she reached up to touch a delicate blossom at that moment she gave birth afterward the sky opened over mother and child and both were bathed in flowers and clear water her son then stood took seven steps and announced his coming into being seven days later queen maya passed out of this life there are variations on this story and all are just as over the top what really grabs me though is that instant when queen maya both reaches for the blossom and gives birth this moment is profound because her perspective is suddenly altered in two ways literally looking upward and figuratively seeing all things through the eyes of a mother her new view remains expansive mind blowing the sky opening a newborn walking and speaking as a new mother i see the truth of my own altered perspective in how i now look on this temple garden a place i have visited countless times in years past my re calibrated gaze hovers just above the knee and i am constantly aware of the potential reach and speed of a curious toddler in motion i see the possibility of danger ancient stone stairs dubious bright red berries and destruction carefully cultivated moss paper lanterns arranged just so i see opportunities for learning and practice and play a pale moth fluttering from leaf to leaf a handful of pebbles a twig pulled across dirt i see a haven for rest or distraction when the festival activities overwhelm or bore but the most powerful and immediate aspect of this new perspective the view that came to me at that moment of my son s birth is a kind of deepened and pervasive empathy for and understanding of the universal human experience that season like cycle of impermanence turning in all our gardens and so as my son and i enter the temple and look on the faces of the people there i cannot help but see the child self in each adult i see the man and woman becoming in each child perhaps because to experience the miracle of new life is to also truly comprehend the inevitability of death i see the arc of lives and yes the enormousness of it is absolutely mind blowing it is stranger in fact than the buddha s magical origin story it is pure reality after my son and i partake in the day s festivities we return to the garden and my husband joins us in his long black robes as he produces the car keys from his sleeve one of the women calls after us urging us to wait she disappears briefly into the temple and then reappears striding along the path with a massive bouquet of fragrant white lilies in her arms for you for mother s day she says as she offers this gift to me my son bursts into giggles when he looks up and sees what i am now holding as if he s had some sudden and hilarious insight and i laugh because he is laughing at the sight of my child straining to reach the blossoms in my hands i am experiencing that first moment of motherhood all over again most people in japan consider the buddha s birthday to be april 8 but some celebrate on may 8 a version of this post originally appeared in mothering in the middle share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized may 08 oranges for the buddha posted by tracy franz 0 while living in our little semi urban house here in kumamoto japan we are often visited by one of the neighbor ladies bearing gifts of whatever is in season in her well tended garden in spring there are strawberries in summer eggplants and tomatoes in fall persimmons and squash in winter oranges these fruits and vegetables then sit before the buddha on our altar as an offering for a short while anyway before winding up in our kitchen to be duly prepared and then consumed by the family i ve always been struck by this neat little cycle of generosity neighbors sharing their bounty our family engaging in ritual at the altar my husband and i preparing meals in the kitchen and the four of us then eating in proxy for the buddha just as it s done in many households and monasteries throughout japan it s idyllic almost it s that last part where my genuine feeling of generosity too often breaks down and becomes complicated the fact is mealtimes with young children can be very very challenging lately with our children at ages 2 and 4 there have been variations on this experience it s saturday or maybe sunday it s been a w...
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