Angela Hugunin
I write near the window, in the stillness that only accompanies early mornings. Today, it’s so dark it could be dusk. Fog clings stubbornly to the pine trees in the yard, and my eye settles on our youngest maple. It’s nothing like its predecessors: two towering ashes who stood, stoic and strong, until a sickness stripped them of strength. The baby maple’s trunk is wrapped in some sort of plastic casing, a plaster cast. The tree isn’t beautiful yet; in fact, it looks rather battered. But it’s growing.
A band of tulips is beginning to poke through a patch of mulch. Just last week, it snowed. The tulips didn’t seem to notice or care.
Sometime in the three weeks since I unexpectedly returned to my family home, the grass darkened its hue. It’s no longer a burnt shade of beige, but a deepening lime. By summer it will be the color of emeralds.
When did I last look at these things? I’ve missed so many of these simple miracles by trying to figure other things out. I’ve buried my head in questions that don’t yet have answers, only to emerge stumbling and unsatisfied. Perhaps now isn’t the time for certainty. Perhaps that’s OK.
My favorite poet, Mary Oliver, explores this paradox of living in her poem, “Mysteries, Yes.” I first discovered it after my aunt gave me a massive collection of Oliver’s work. I was drawn to this poem in particular from the get-go. In it, Oliver explores the enigmatic beauty of the world around us. She celebrates the fact that life is difficult to pin down. When I first read the poem a few years ago, I was already far from a fan of uncertainty. Yet I could sense that Oliver was onto something.
How often do I move too quickly to take in the countless “mysteries too marvelous to be understood” in my own life? I’ve gotten comfortable taking the steady growth of my houseplants for granted. I never look at a full plate of food and contemplate the wonder it is that someone had to plant the original seeds, harvest the crop, ship it, and prepare it, and that the result of all that labor can bring me energy. Rarely do I grasp how remarkable it is that art offers consolation through all sorts of human emotion or, as Oliver puts it, “How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem.”
I’ve lost count of how many times poems have settled my internal storms. They’ve let me sit with my sadness, ponder it, and almost befriend it. They’ve humbled me by giving me a window into the pain of others. They’ve restrained me from assuming I can grasp things with utmost certainty; they’ve reminded me that this world is far from static.
“From where I write, the world is a storm of scars and grief, and somehow, of unexpected delight. This mélange isn’t logical. It’s a mystery. But perhaps now is the perfect time for such a thing.”
From where I write, the world is a storm of scars and grief, and somehow, of unexpected delight. This mélange isn’t logical. It’s a mystery. But perhaps now is the perfect time for such a thing.
Perhaps this is the time to take an extra slow sip from a piping mug of coffee, to let the steam melt into the waiting face and to savor the way that dark substance can invigorate the body. Perhaps this is the time to gaze at squirrels in the yard, those lucky rodents who don’t seem to realize—or care—that we’ve changed, those chipper squirrels whose routines continue with full gusto despite everything else. Perhaps this is the time to sit with someone you’ve grown accustomed to seeing each day, to stare at their familiar face under familiar light and look for the unfamiliar things that made you love them in the first place.
This is a time when one of the few things we’re certain about is how little certainty there is. We can scramble to find answers and do what we can to act in the midst of these swirling questions and trials, but this can also be a time to pause. Somehow, in the middle of all these current messes, there are still pleasant—even delightful—mysteries to be found. There are friends to check in on (from a distance), there’s astonishment to be shared. There are poems to be read. There is hope to be found, embraced, passed along.
The heavy blanket of fog in the yard has lightened so that it’s no more than a sheet. The baby maple, still alone, stretches up from its cast. Next year, it may be crowned with leaves, and someday, it will give us shade, like the ones who came before it. Somehow, in the midst of everything, it grows stronger each day.
Angela Hugunin is a writer in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and an intern for the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild.