The Big Bang Theory, or Cosmic Jigsaws

I haven’t put together a jigsaw puzzle for a long time.  When visiting my mom recently in her assisted living, she had a lot of them because she can’t hear TV very well and needs to do something.  Some were not easy.  But we worked together, eventually snapping them triumphantly into place.  “Ah HA!” we’d shout.

In the scientific world, theory has it that our universe started with the Big Bang.  This must have been impressive.  All matter condensing in to a very small dot, then BOOM, exploding outward and created the far flung stars.  Evidently, these sociable stars again to want to conjoin, and put themselves back into galaxies.  Our own galaxy spins in a spiral rotation.  

Do all galaxies spin?  Never wondered about this before.  I can picture them spinning as a dance of triumph as if they had collected the pieces of the Big Bang-created jigsaw and put at least part of it together.  Those big radio listening devices aimed at space probably hear a cosmic “Ah HA!”

Anything divisive or explosive just doesn't seem natural to us.  We feel as if our lives are a dumped out jigsaw puzzle.  

Even the stars, billions of miles apart, want to form galaxies.  When we don’t feel a part of things, we’re sad.  Everybody wants to be included.

When putting together a jigsaw puzzle, it helps to look at photo on the box.  Step back and look at the whole.  What makes us feel complete?  What are we looking for in our relationships, our family, our friends, our world?  Usually it is simple.  To belong.  To feel loved, needed, wanted, appreciated.

Notice in your next conversation with someone you’ve just met how there is a natural inclination to find common ground.  It is compelling for us to find ways to draw closer.  Knowing that gravitational pull and a yearning to draw together is so innate in every atom in the universe can go a long way in helping to dispel the jigsaw puzzle presented to us every day, whether divisive countries, or broken families and relationships.

When we’re feeling challenged by our own Big Bang events, then it is time to reach out in charity.  Tie down moments of good.  Lasso and hog tie bits of caring. Throw mooring lines of kindness.  When at last you’ve got some semblance of order once again, I’ll join with you in a triumphant “Ah HA!”

Heritage Breeds of Chickens

At our local living history museum, Ft. Nisqually, we have fine ladies who preen and display some of the nicest dresses that needles ever wrought.  We have gents strutting in beaver felt top hats.  We have hordes of adolescents peeping for the fiddler to rosin up her bow.  We’ve got mountain men with tomahawks stuck in their belts.  We’ve got a great garden, and we’ve got chickens.

Seems like most backyards have them too.  Children visitors used to be amazed at cuddling baby chicks and hearing them peep.  Now they question us as to what chicken feed we might use and offer opinions as to what breed they are.  I don’t keep backyard chickens.  Know very little about what to feed them.  I've been told they are speckled Sussex, a heritage breed.

I do know my way around a kitchen though, and was a bit surprised awhile back when I was hustling my cooking gear and dutch oven into the period kitchen.  The chickens aren’t allowed in there and yet one of the hens hiding in the corner.  Most mountain men out here would crow about finding the chicken already handy in the kitchen.  At least, that was what they would tease.  Our chickens are for show only.

“C’mon, sweetie, out you go,” I urged.

The chicken cowered in the corner. 

I swished my long skirts and attempted to herd it out to the door. 

It started getting huffy and settled in.

I tried to pick it up and got pecked.

“C’mon now, you can’t stay here” My hand was pink and there was already a sharp bruise.  I refused to be frightened by a chicken.

The chicken started offering opinions as to which MY heritage.  What breed of chicken was I? 

I was not going to be outdone by a chicken.

“C’mon, you sassy bird,” I ordered.  “Get the cluck out!”  I gently scooped it forward with my foot. 

The chicken stood up, plopped out an egg, and ran off screaming indignities.

Every bird in the coop must have heard about the wretched treatment I meted out.  It may be my imagination, but they all give me the cold shoulder.  And the rooster?  Well, he won’t even give me the time of day.

Post Apocalyptic House

When my mom came to visit me in Seattle, her hometown, we would occasionally drive past the house where she grew up.  It never looked the same to her.  Although it is nice, it was not as great as she remembered. Her dad was a florist and had traffic-stopping flower beds.  Personally, I don’t think the magnificence of his flower beds really had anything to do with the fact he was a florist.  It had more to do with the fact that he lived in a small house with four daughters and a wife.

He needed to escape the drama and hours of them practicing scales on the piano.  So he fled to the garden.  My mom remembers their garden gazebo often smelled of cigar smoke.  Some men have their man caves in the basement with TVs and beer.  Her dad sat in a gazebo surrounded by little girls’ tea sets and forgotten dollies.

But he didn’t neglect what was inside the house.  The family was a close knit one.  I have pictures of the inside of her house and recognize the furniture as the very chairs I sat on growing up and the paintings I looked at my whole life.  Here I thought they were antiques.  In reality?  Hand-me-downs from my grandmother.  But basically, isn’t that what antiques are?  Hand-me-downs bestowed and lovingly kept?

My mom, being the only one left from her family and my dad’s family, has piles of inherited stuff.  All of it cherished because it belonged to people she loved.  I can imagine manor houses in England are stuffed to the rafters with treasures.  But even manor houses get full.  How do they handle all those years of accumulation?  How do you pitch the slightly worn Victorian chair your mom sat in every night?  What do you do with your dad’s lovingly preserved Boy Scout uniform?  The medals from World War II?  What do you do with HIS father’s drafting tools?

Sell them? When my aunt and uncle passed away, my cousins faced this dilemma.  One cousin lives across the country, the other travels a lot, so neither of them could keep the collections of silver boxes, art, or paintings from Europe.  They were sold for pennies on the dollar.

Between sentimentality and economy, my brothers and I have kept everything from a generation raised in the Depression who never threw anything out.

This past year, Mom’s had to move out of her house and into assisted living, and now faces moving to skilled nursing. Yesterday my husband and I came down to visit, and are staying in her abandoned house.  It’s as if she just went out shopping months ago and never came back.

Very post-apocalyptic here.  There are quiet rooms where people used to live, books with bookmarks still in them.  Photo albums, beds they slept in, half-used hand lotion.  Spiders are in the pantry, dead flies in the shower.  An overturned walker lies in the den.

The collections of items that have been loved for generations are adrift in a forgotten sea.  Memories call like mournful foghorns.  Christmas parties, four weddings and receptions, and black tie dinner parties for 50 people were all held here.  Piercing fragments of the past stab me in every room.  My dad cooking breakfast on Saturday morning, my mom cutting roses.  Dogs, babies, college students---gone.  All that is left is spider webs and empty chairs.

But there are torch bearers.  Lighthouses.  A voice calling through the fog. 

Visiting my mom today, I showed her some pictures of my grandchildren and told her of our plans for the future.  She wanted to be included in them.  She wanted to go up to Washington once more, wanted to see our new cabin when it was built.  Her face lit up when I told her about it.  I held her rope-veined hand, the tissue paper skin cool in mine. 

You can count on me Mom.  You will be included.  In all the future Thanksgivings, when I’m making the stuffing with your special recipe.  In all the future Christmases when I’m tying the bow just like you did.  All the future times when I’m singing your favorite hymns to my grandchildren. Whenever I'm kind, or gracious, or loving.

You’ll be there.  Forever.