What "Under the Gumbo Limbo" means

The Gumbo Limbo tree pictured in my blog design is actually a tree my mother grew from a cutting she brought back from the Bahamas. The tree is tall and magnificent. I have two trees that were cuttings grown from her Gumbo Limbo.

My mother's tree sits beside a stand of bamboo in the back yard of our family home. Before the bamboo, my childhood playhouse stood for many years. My father built it for me. It had louvre windows, vinyl flooring, a peaked roof and was painted yellow. The very back of the small rectangular one room structure had real glass windows that slid up to open.
The playhouse was a place my brother and I claimed as our own. We slept overnight in it and stored our bikes there. Behind the playhouse there was a huge Australian pine tree we would climb.

We loved that tree because it allowed us to see all our neighbors, including Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt who lived next door to us in a two story stucco house. Mr. Hoyt was very tall and strong. Mrs. Hoyt was very round and short. We could almost, but not quite, see into their bedroom window on the second floor. We would call out to them and Mr. Hoyt would come to the window and say good morning or good afternoon to us very politely. Neither of them ever yelled at us for disturbing their privacy or annoying them, although I'm sure we did. Our other neighbors could see us up in the tree but no one ever acknowledged our presence like the Hoyts. They were our favorites.

During a hurricane named Donna or Betsy, our playhouse was destroyed. The roof blew off, landing in the alley beside the Australian pine. I remember that hurricane very vividly, because the pouring rain and howling wind was very frightening, and because it blew down our playhouse and tree.

I wasn't living at home when the Gumbo Limbo tree was planted. I was in college then. When my mother died in 2009, the tree was 37 years old. It's peeling red skin, that gives it the nickname 'tourist' tree, is a deep russet and orange red and its leaves are dark green. The leaves are stiff and rustle against each other making a brushing noise with the slightest breeze.

Before I left my mother's house the final time, clean and sparkling inside, with its yard mowed and shrubbery trimmed, I took several photos of that tree. I wanted to remember it and how long it had stood there guarding my mother's house. It had traveled to the house as a twig, carried aboard the Irma Marie, a yacht named for my grandmother. It was planted lovingly, tended thoughtfully and grew to be almost 20 feet in height. I hope it will continue to live a very long life. 

Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt, my mother, who planted and loved the tree, and my father, who built our playhouse, and all the neighbors are gone now. Only the Gumbo Limbo and I know the stories about that house and the people who lived there. Only the two of us could write those tales. Eventually, we will.

The speed of life

Too fast. The speed of life is too fast. Life speeds up as we age. It seems that way to a lot of people. People who notice, as children, how endless summers soon end too fast, and finally become a mere blur as the school years flow by. Four years of college seem not long enough, and then we're out in the real world. Working, working, time slowing only during the five day work week and then speeding up once again for two brief days of freedom. Freedom to clean our home, wash our clothes, shop for food, and children? Well, not in my area of expertise, but I've been told that life with children equals a definite parallel universe of speeding time running alongside and competing with everything else.
Fast? What is fast? As opposed to slow, it's much faster. The speed of life, the speed of light, the difference? An endless, consecutive series of nows versus 186,000 miles a second or 700 million miles an hour. 
We exist in an ignored, unrealized vacuum of nows. Our nows can be yesterdays, todays or tomorrows but only our nows are constant. Instead of living in our nows, we dwell on our yesterdays and make plans for our tomorrows. Being in the present, by not wasting our nows, is something spiritual, semi-devine earthly beings have been instructing us to do for centuries.
Time flies. Nows fly faster and faster, at the ever increasing speed of life. Surely there is some algorithm somewhere that magically and Einsteinically [my word] explains why this phenomenon happens. There have to be prescribed sets and subsets of numbers and figures, with drawings and arrows, that show how we start as droplets from a faucet, fluidly falling downward, unaware we are simply forming ranks, as we hit bottom, with the already circling masses, speeding up exponentially, as the circles become smaller, until we finally flow down the drain.
Down to where? Is the journey just finding our way back to what we know, as Eliot promises? Is it Churchill's riddle, wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in mystery? Will this mystery be solved at the end (or beginning) of the trip? We share the trait of curiosity with our feline creatures and this is the greatest mystery we've never solved. Faster and faster, round and round, down and down. Curiouser and curiouser. Do we depart or do we commence? It could be the adventure hasn't even started yet.

My year of death and loss . . .

Loss was a way of life for a very long time. It seems as if, from 2007 to recently, there has been nothing but loss. It takes a toll that is physical, mental and metaphysical. Loss chipped away at my heart, not diminishing me, but hardening or honing my sensibilities. I have spent a long time this year wondering about this time of my life and the losses I heard my grandparents and my parents talk about. I remember them talking about their friends dying. How much they missed them. And then the loss of their parents and how that made them feel. I lost my father, then my mother. Each of these losses came with possessions to sort through and memories to lay to rest.
The loss of my pets hurt me deeply as well. Arthur and Lost, my two feline friends of advanced age. Lost, the outdoor cat who came inside and decided he liked it better sleeping on the bed. Arthur, a proud, wild Russian Blue who fell in love with me as quickly as I fell in love with him. They defined certain years of my life and I held Lost as he drifted from this world to the beyond, and cried when I came home to find my beloved Arthur had waited until I was away to leave me, curled up in a ball as if he was asleep outside under my bedroom window.
Ubo, my little Shepherd mix girl, found at a distance ride and rescued because no one else wanted to deal with the small, sad mangy puppy who sat as close as she dared to the ride officials because she was just trying to keep warm. She just decided one night, very late, that it was time to go and rested her head in my lap and looked up at me until her eyes closed that final time.
They all lived long, happy and healthy lives. But still, each loss diminished me in ways I can hardly describe.
When I said goodbye to my beautiful Astrolea, mother of my two beautiful Arab geldings, full brothers only two years apart, it was planned. Rather than find her in terrible pain at some not-so-distant point in time, I decided it was far kinder to give her an injection that would let her go painlessly. Orchestrating the planned death of a beloved horse is not an easy thing to do. But I was determined it would be her last best day, with carrots, treats, lots of hay and she would be surrounded by her sons and their real uncle, Gandolf, who was the love of her life. They made her last day special and then the vet and her assistant were there along with my friend Jim who hated burying horses but did it just for me. He told me it always made him cry and he hated to upset the owners of the horses any more than they already were.
He had dug a great sloping hole in the small paddock. The vet did the injection and she dropped to the ground and was gone very fast. Sometimes, it is not that easy but I was lucky that day and so was she. My riding friends, husband and the vet and her assistant and I all took hold of her and slid her down to her final rest. It was easy and beautiful and the humans, working together to ease her into that place filled my heart with a kind of pride. I had wanted it to be a graceful end, as graceful as this beautiful mare had always been to me. It was April and my lilies and narcissus were in bloom. I cut a stalk filled with four creamy white lilies, one for each of the horses, who would no longer be four, but three, and placed it on her neck. I wrapped her eyes with white vetwrap because I didn't want sand to get in them when she was covered. She faced east toward Mecca because she was a full-blooded Arabian horse. Her bloodlines traced back to the African desert and to the Bedouins whose horses slept beside their silken pallets at night inside their tents and acted as watchdogs, alerting them if their enemies dared to come too close.
Jim finished his job and as he did, I wiped my tears and wrote the vet a check so they could leave. My best friend and riding buddy of 20 years stood with me as Lealea was covered and we said our goodbyes and talked of our two gray mares, their first ride together and how one would surely be waiting for the other when it was her time.
The loss of Noche, my black cat family matriarch and her daughter, Big began what was, for me, my year of death. I knew it was going to be bad but had no idea I would lose my two oldest and best friends, Chaos, my wolfdog for 13 years and Gandolf, my last best riding horse, mentor, protector, and wise teacher.
From February 5 until November 17 of 2011, I was numb and continued to feel as if I too was going to fall off the earth into nothingness, just missing them so terribly. Even now, writing this down because I willed myself back to this blog I have abandoned for such a long time, I can feel the sadness tightening deep in my chest.
If it is inhuman to miss my nonhuman friends more than some humans, then that is what I am. I'm not contrite, or embarrassed, or less a person than anyone else. The animals have always drawn me to them and I have always drawn them to me. From the time I was two and my frantic mother found me standing in the middle of a herd of cows who were licking my face as I giggled, I have alway preferred the company of the four-legged creatures.
As hard as it is to lose each faithful, giving soul, for they do have souls, I know I will continue to be a lover of animals and seek their friendship until I die. The poem about a rainbow bridge always makes me cry. Sometimes I count the heads of those I expect to meet me there and it is a very large number of furry faces. I only hope the bridge is wide enough so we can all go across together.

Listening for Whippoorwills

The first time I can remember listening for whippoorwills was when Mary Kern died. When we decided we wanted to live in Jupiter Farms, Mary was our realtor and helped us purchase two of the three adjoining properties we own. Her husband, Richard, was a contractor and he built our home for us.

In 1991, both Mary and I were diagnosed with cancer. I survived but Mary was not as fortunate. A short time before she died, I went to visit her in the hospital. She was serene and at peace with the fact that she was not going to beat her cancer. She told me I was lucky and should live my life as if every moment mattered, because it did. We cried a lot and hugged goodbye. It was the last time I saw her.

Around the middle of February, Mary died. After hearing the news, I walked outside. It was cold. My horses nickered for me in the dusk. That time of evening, for them, only meant one thing, dinner. I mixed their feed and loaded it into the wheelbarrow with heavy pads of hay. As I made the rounds, dumping their food into buckets and dropping hay in their racks, I was waiting for something.

I grieved for a friend, wife and mother whose life had been too short. The crescent moon glowed dimly through the trees, lighting up the western sky. Then I heard the whippoorwill. Its cry is its name — whipp-oor-will, a distinct and lonely trill. In the darkness, I was waiting for a sound to match my sadness.

Visiting South Florida briefly on their way to who knows where, the whippoorwill's cry reminds me of those I've loved and will never see again in this life. Each year, my mother used to tell me, there will be more of them.

When I hear the cry of the first whippoorwill, I speak their names as a litany, believing they will hear me and know they haven't been forgotten.

Twenty years later, it is Valentine's night, and I have started listening for whippoorwills.

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For Cindy, Topsy, Misty, Daisy, Danny Boy, Pop, Gran, Betsy, Fred, Sam, Mary Ella, Kathijean, Lump, Chari, Dump, Speedo, Sandi, Skipper, Sasha, W Baron Gairloch, Rusty, BH Bay Flag, Crescent Moon, Lea, CC Baron Gandolf, Big, Chaos, Dad, Mom, Lacey, Char, Rocky, Tweety, Snowball, Samantha, Willie, Tammeer, Mariah, Miska, Ferrere, Gigi, GiGi, Margaret, Mike, Pauline, Lloyd, Ed, Mary, Dave, Daryl, Dolly, Noodle, April, Abby, Lynn, George, Betty, Dal, Suwa, and anyone I've forgotten. I love you all.

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Whippoorwill by John James Audubon