“Shadows on the things you know” (Neil Young)

I woke early, still on Gatineau time, and after I’d made coffee, I went out on the upper deck. Robins and Swainsons thrushes were singing in the woods beyond the grass. Something else, maybe a Western tanager, raspy and shrill. The dog roses began to bloom in our absence, the first dozen or so, and many more buds at various stages. I love roses. I love the old French cultivars, the noisettes, the moss roses, the David Austin hybrids. But the delicate beauty of a dog rose, petals the softest pink imaginable, the scent faint and sweet: these might be the ur-rose for me. You can’t really cut them. They fall apart, the petals fine as tissue. In the fall, they have most elegant long red hips.

In a pot below the dog roses, the sweet lemon lilies are also blooming. These are one of two species used to breed fancier cultivars but I prefer their simplicity. On long stems, the flowers are clear and perfect yellow.

I am looking for something, looking as I walk among the flowers, checking out the progress of the tomato plants. Do you feel this, sometimes, that the landscape is changing? That you are changing, that you no longer know how to read the map? And are the maps you have the ones you need? I am looking for signs, shifts, turns in the road. I told my grandson E. that I thought I’d written my last book and he was very interested in this. He kept asking me how many I’d written (17), how long it look to write each one, how many pages there were in each book, in total. How much the books cost. I could see his mind doing a simple math. And of course it makes no sense, economically. It was never about that. What was it about then? E. wanted to know. He kept coming back to it. He’s 7.

This morning, holding a bud of dog rose in my palm to smell its elusive sweetness, I was thinking ahead. Next year I’ll return to university. E. was very interested in that too. Maybe he was thinking of his classroom and how a grandmother might look at one of the small desks, her pencils lined up, her notebooks new and ready. What would she write in them? He was concerned my French wasn’t up to much but we read a few books together, him reading the text and me translating, or trying to. With his help, I could improve! And maybe in a classroom, actual or virtual, I could learn other things too.

As we were settling into our seats on the plane for the flight home yesterday, a song was playing quietly: Neil Young’s “Birds”.

When you see me fly away without you
Shadow on the things you know
Feathers fall around you
And show you the way to go
It’s over, it’s over

The landscape is changing. I have things to find out, to follow, to understand, or not, but I want to try. Feathers weren’t falling around me this morning but a dog rose petal landed on the sleeve of my old Japanese yukata, soft pink on the faded blue. Patterns are everywhere. Maps. Shadows on the things you know.