2000-05-13
Dear Diary:

����There are days when the rocks tell me their secrets, when it feels as if the right one just calls me to lift it from the pile and ease it into place in my wall.

����There are days when the rocks are stubbornly mute and I have to fight hard to extend my wall even a few feet.

����Paul's father, Poppa, built the first dry laid stone walls I'd ever seen. All around Paul's childhood home are walls Poppa built without using mortar, just rock laid on rock, fitted so well that it could be used to hold up a slope or just stand by itself as a divider.

����There is a quiet beauty to walls woven like this from the rock which litters all the land around here.

Jesspoo back when she was sapping my will to live.����I've always maintained that stone walls were the only reason that my daughter lived through her "terrible twos", that period from about 18 months through to about three, when it seemed like the only word my kid knew was the word "no".

����No, she wouldn't eat this, no she wouldn't do that ... she would set her little jaw and stare me in the eye, dare me to force her. I wouldn't tolerate rudeness, the line was drawn there.

����But as for the rest, well ... the growing stack of child rearing books that became my night time reading said that this was the time when my daughter was finding out who she was, and so these no's were necessary. It was hard on us both.

����There was a week when all she would eat was dill pickles and tomatoes. When we first started toilet training she refused to co-operate. She went through a period when she refused to nap, even though her sleepless afternoons left her in a frenzy of exhaustion and tears. There were days when I wanted to strangle her.

����When it got to be too much, I would slide her into my baby back pack and carry her the quarter mile down the road to her grandparents. I knew they spoiled her silly, but I just had to have a few hours to recoup.

The pond just before I began my wall building.����That's when I began to build my walls.

����It is hard, mindless, muscle, back and knee punishing work. I don't like to work with gloves, so the rough surfaces of the rocks sand my finger tips to a painful tenderness. But as I do it, it's as if my thoughts emerge from a chrysalis, and they float with a freedom I find hard to recapture when I do anything else.

����And so I have been slowly building walls ever since.

The same area once I began stringing my wall.����I am almost finished ringing our pond with a wall now, this is my fourth summer spent as time permits on this project.

����As I wrestled today with a large piece of slate that refused to balance properly, I heard the grosbeaks and finches fight over my feeders about 30 meters behind me. As I shifted the rock a few inches to the left and heard that satisfying scrape as it meshed with the rest of the wall, my eye was drawn to the bright orange flash of my swimming partners, my goldfish.

����I can hardly wait until the water loses its winter chill and I can float in the warmth of my pond, the scent of the yellow water lilies perfuming the air, the goldfish nibbling at the tips of my toes. It won't be long.

Pond with wall and mature plantings.  I live to garden, I truly do.����On a clear day like today, as I set the sun warmed rocks that make my wall's base into the pond's clay bottom, I have to watch for the frogs.

����They are drawn to the warmth of the stone and set their almost human front hands on the rocks. They do a sort of dead man's float, using their hands to balance on the rocks, basking, and I have to brush them away so I can set the next row of stone in place.

����As my wall begins to rise out of the water, they watch me with that unreadable, impassive froggy stare. This close, I get to admire the beauty and diversity of their markings, no two of them exactly alike. This is the only time they don't fear me, the time when I am setting stone.

����As I walk our property, I can mark out the stages of my life through the rock walls that dot it. My first, in front of our woodshed, was begun to fight rage. The one I am completing now, which may be my last, was done purely for the pleasure I've found in the work itself.

����Isn't it odd where happiness lies?

--Marn

Old Drivel - New Drivel


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Want to delve into my sordid past?
She's mellllllllllllllting - Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 - Back off, Buble - Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 - Dispersed - Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 - Nothing comes for free - Monday, Nov. 21, 2011 - None of her business - Friday, Nov. 04, 2011 -


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