My dear friend Tamara died last night of a heart attack.

Tamara and I met in Bronson Ragan’s theory class in the mid-1950s at the Juilliard Preparatory Division when the school was still on Claremont Avenue. We sang together in the children’s chorus under Leslie Bennett.

The last time I saw Tamara in person was at a performance of Fiddler on the Roof in Boston, starring Theodore Bikel, before she and Theo were married.

It is too soon to know how life will be without the half century of Tamara’s friendship, intelligence, giftedness, wit, insight, kindness, and loyalty. She set a standard, and has been a marvelous friend, especially during the last two decades.

Tamara ~ you will be greatly missed. The blue lilac blooms for you.

I was a trained liar. In order to survive in my childhood setting I had to withhold the truth and invent “reality” that pleased the leaders.  We learned that it was a sin to bear false witness against a neighbor but no mention was made of bearing false witness against the self.

The question for us as emerging adults is whether we wish to know the truth about ourselves or not, and what we tell ourselves about our lying.

My understanding is that every one of us employs defense mechanisms, unconscious psychological strategies for dealing with experience unacceptable or unbearable to the conscious mind. These unconscious defenses may appear to work for a time but signify inner splits that eventually impede our success in adult life. As we strive to become truly adult we attempt to bring our unconscious material forward into consciousness where it can be dealt with appropriately. We strive to find out what is inwardly true, and what is untrue.

In our interactions with others we sometimes encounter the Mixed Message. At no point has anyone suggested to me a way of coping with mixed messages. I have grown past the error of believing only the appealing part of the Mix and discarding the rest. I understand that as difficult and incongruous as it seems, I must believe both (or all) parts of a mixed message because they are all parts of the complete picture. But what is to happen next? Do I confront the person with the incongruence? Shall I avoid the person? Is the method of dealing with mixed messages different in each case? Usually the person giving a mixed message adopts a defensive stance, consciously as well as unconsciously, and resists a confrontation even if expressed in kindly terms. My conclusion after 72 years is that a person who gives mixed messages is conflicted and therefore not a good prospect for relationship. What do you think?

Could it be that we human beings exist here on Earth along with all the other forms of life for the wellbeing of the planet on its travels around the sun as part of the greater universe?

I ponder that while looking at the yellow blooms of the currant bush, so favored by the hummingbirds.

Today I visited Dahlov Ipcar. Her front yard was a sea of daffodils, with myrtle  blooming deep blue at the foot of the forsythia.  The smoke detector beeped furiously as I entered the house. Dahlov was busy at the stove, conjuring up the finest Spanish rice I have ever eaten,  complete with black olives and basil and chunks of red pepper and mushrooms and pepperoni. She recited a verse of “Ode to a Grecian Urn” for me at lunch, after which we looked at her new knight in armor painting.

I helped Dahlov place the two pots of pansies I brought for her, one filled with deep blues and velvety near-blacks, the other with orange and yellows and antique shades. We found room for them next to her back steps, near the stump that is populated with hen and chicks of eight varieties.

Just before leaving, I helped myself to the tall stalks of red rhubarb Dahlov had offered. On the way down Stone Bridge Lane I caught a glimpse of the huge yellow magnolia in full bloom at her sister-in-law’s place.  In Bath I stopped to take pictures of the yellow magnolia on Washington Street.

These flowers winter over, near the surface, in frozen ground. Where inside do they keep the blue? Or is it something the buds meet in the spring air that brings out the blue? Do we know anything even as simple as how a seed or bulb  stores the makings of colors?

During the sunny days I prepare the garden beds, plant seeds and bulbs, trim the raspberries, pile up apple prunings. Ticks lie in wait for me. Perhaps they live on apple trees and crawl up my sleeve while I pile the branches. Soon I will have a new bean trellis made from apple shoots.  I have ordered yarrow flower tincture to  ward off ticks.

I transplanted a clump of deep purple violets from the corner rock garden into the cottage garden under the white lilac.

In the evenings I read the poetry of Kate Barnes. Imagine having Elizabeth Coatsworth as your mother and Henry Beston your father!  And then growing up to be a poet…!

Somehow I lost a book about a cat that went to sea, a book with beautiful drawings of ships, a book I think I bought in Cape Porpoise. The librarian there must have gone to the top because the state library wrote me, having found at last that the book is Scraggly the Stowaway Cat by Tom Bradbury.

Early in the mornings I knit the KnitPicks Seasons Shawl for Summer, but using the Fall and Winter pattern, since the summer pattern is no longer available. That makes the snowflakes appear in yellows, like fallen pollen from a springtime tree. In twelve more days at the present rate I will complete the yellow and begin the border in shades of light green.

This springtime is strange, with weather warm enough for planting a month and a half early, but no rains. What will the summer bring?

Something new is happening on the Hornby chat. The Decorah eaglets are being impersonated by several chatters in a charming and informative drama. Last night for bedtime story the eaglets heard selections from Henry Beston’s The Outermost House.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

This is a gift for Paula, who is rebuilding Bedouin houses out of mud bricks. The little mesh bag contains a round cake called an Anisette Soap Stone, hand-molded and hand-milled in Kandahar, Afghanistan. This soap is “supersaturated with a range of rare botanical oils, chosen in deliberate combination for their cleansing, moisturizing, reparative qualities.”  Doesn’t that sound scrumptious?

The washcloth is knit in the Weavings pattern from the Nifty Knit Dishcloths pattern book.

Welcome Home, Paula!