Last night, my life flashed before my eyes. Thank God, I was not on the verge of death, though some say that on the eve of Yom Kippur, we are in such a state. Last night, I saw flashes of all my memorable moments since 2003, in fractions-of-a-second glimpses. I was mesmerized; I couldn't budge, as time moved before me; my daughter went from a gangly little girl to beautiful young woman; my son from pre-pubescent child to a young man nearly six feet tall. The seasons changed as I stared, with afternoons in the swimming pool shifting to autumn pumpkin fields and falling leaves, to snow-covered driveways with kids on sleds, through Passovers in Phoenix, San Diego, Hawaii, Los Angeles, and tulip fields of blindingly brilliant color.
All on my computer screen.
I had installed a new printer, one that works through a local internet connection, and upon its settling in on my hard drive, the web offered me the chance to start up. Click! And suddenly all the photos in my "My Pictures" file--about 19,000 of them--started appearing in front of me. Apparently, I'd inadvertently started up a photo editing and organizing program that needed to download all my photos so I could use it. Never mind that I've got several other brands of the same kind of software (my favorite by far is Microsoft Picture It! because it offers you one button none of the others do: "sharpen or blur." If the photo is a gooey mess, one shift of this slider gives you sharpness! Amazing! It's rescued and perfected many an underlit snapshot).
But I took this display of my life as more than just an internet quirk. On the eve of Yom Kippur, I assigned it an almost mystical significance. It allowed me to realize how very blessed I am, how free from any real problems, and to pledge (ble nedar!) to be worthy of such riches by applying myself to mitzvot and Torah study with greater dedication. It inspired me to take Yom Kippur even more seriously--I think of the word 'pleading'--that the coming year allows me to continue with the same opportunities, creating the same types of marvelous memories, that I saw last night on my computer screen.
Maybe this sounds hokey. Like most people, I do see Yom Kippur as a challenge, something difficult to get through. But of course it's the opposite; it's a means toward liberation, a clean slate. I wish all my Jewish friends g'mar chatima tova, may you be sealed for a good and sweet year, and may you enjoy each moment as much as I've enjoyed mine.
It's tulip time in the Great Northwest, and those of you in other parts of the world--unless it's Holland--probably don't know exactly what that means. Visitors come from all over the globe to see the Skagit Valley's fields of brilliant blooms, in colors so shockingly vibrant that your immediate reaction is to thank Hashem for the ability to see them. For our family, a trek to The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival (April 1-30) is an annual event. Over the years, the children have perhaps had more than their fill of their mother's insistence that they squat down level with the blooms in the bouncy clay unique to the fields for my incessant photos. They used to enjoy this family outing, picking up the stray decapitated tulip to make bouquets, running down the lanes between the brilliant stripes of color, and cheerfully poking their heads through the plywood stand-ups of dutch maidens, with tulips behind, stretching in eye-popping rows to the horizon. As they got older, they'd temper their grousing if they could bring a friend, and lately, they grumble and consider the opportunity to view this most beautiful and miraculous demonstration of Hashem's generosity as merely my cruel need for them to pose for photos. (Happily, my eldest daughter has gained renewed enthusiasm for the tulips, since living in New York, where the most picturesque sights in her Midtown neighborhood are the mobs of women snatching up dresses at H & M to sell later on EBay.)
Last Sunday, my husband cajoled our son to accompany us and some family friends on our 2007 Tulip Trek. The hour ride from our home northward is spectacular, with stands of majestic firs, winding rivers, fields, mountains and even a pocket where you can count on freakishly horrid weather before emerging on the other side to sunshine. Once at tulip headquarters in Mt. Vernon, picked a couple years ago by Rand McNalley as "the most liveable town in America," we followed the eager hoardes beyond the modest city limits--its 1920s fading storefronts only half-Yuppified--to the wide open fields. Straight, two-lane roads criss-cross the terrain, which is hospitable to tulips as it is low-lying and often floods in the winter, leaving fertile beige mud with huge air bubbles trapped just beneath the surface. Walking on this earth is springy, in the most peculiar way, with each step giving and then popping you up.
Our first stop was Tulip Town, which, when we began our tulip mania a decade ago, was open fields with free entry, a few porta-potties and a food trailer near the parking aisles just off the road. It was a spectacular day, temperatures near 60, with the sun strong through fluffy white puff-clouds. They say that photographing the tulips is better in overcast, as the bright sun makes harsh shadows, but the happiness of the light made the day all the more festive. Tulip Town is now an "attraction," with three-dollar admission, all sorts of confections and fair-food, vendors of artwork and kites and crafts, and the centerpiece--a long building with huge sprays of each type of tulip, which may be purchased for delivery in September as bulbs to plant in your garden.
Tulip Town is the business of Dutch immigrants, the DeGoede family, passed down through generations now. (http://www.tuliptown.com/history.htm) At the very entrance to the fields, prominent from the first time we visited, is a mural on the side of a building of the fields in bloom, with a banner proclaiming, "To God Goes the Glory." The present DeGoedes running the farm, Anthony and Jeannete, were featured in a big article in the Seattle Times because they have created an official International Tulip Peace Garden. Jeannete explained that they are simple people who don't really understand politics but disdain war, and they felt that a garden flying 16 flags and displaying 60 varieties of tulips could be their statement along the lines of motorist Rodney King's, "Can't we all just get along?" In the garden is a replica of DeGoede Village Windmill, and a mini Statue of Liberty. The Peace Garden is too hokey to express, but in its noble purpose, sweet as the wholesome families who come to pose their children amongst the flowers.
Then there are the tulip fields...the most magnificent flowers with their variety of shapes, richness of colors and vast stripes of hue splashing across the landscape. With the sunshine illuminating them, the petals glisten, becoming translucent, softly bobbing in the crisp breeze. But the sun is so warm, no one needs a coat. The rows of red flowers (inside each a pattern of bright yellow and black, unseen) give way to canary yellow, then pink, then dark purple, nearly black. Tulips' petals can be fringed, as if clipped with nail scissors into short tines. They can have pointy petals, striped, or two or three-toned. The magnificence of each flower is only enhanced when you peek inside to discover its uniquely patterned secret.
After a walk around the fields--perhaps a mile--and a spin around the displays, we get in the car again to visit Roozengarde, the second major tulip destination in the Skagit Valley. Roozengarde is famed for its beautifully planted display gardens, where the bulbs they sell are arranged so that they continuously bloom during the festival (there are early, mid and late-blooming varieties). Amongst the tulips are planted hyacinths, whose heady fragrances are so thick you gasp. And daffodils, in startlingly delicate and happy configurations (double, triple, oranges, creams, two-toned, whites--and traditional yellows of all sorts). Roozengarde also has a windmill, and lovely old rail-fencing that provides a beautiful backdrop. They have the concessions too--kettle corn, hot dogs, and of course their own area for selling tulip bulbs. My husband picks out and purchases them--250 bulbs this year--and then takes me through the gardens showing me his selections. He knows my favorites are the parrot tulips--with their twisted shapes and wild marbled colors that have been induced by giving the plants an actual virus.
As you can see, I'm wild about tulips. And nothing brings me so close to ecstacy as a sunny day with my family and good friends walking the tulip fields and snapping photos. I know that the breathtaking pictures I take are interchangeable, year-to-year--you've seen one amazingly gorgeous flower, you've seen 'em all. But I can't stop taking pictures because I just want to capture the beauty, capture the moment--I don't want to ever lose the exhilaration of spring in full flower, of life in full-bloom.
It's Sunday night, the time when I tend to look back and ahead...back at Shabbat, and how quickly it went by, with two laboriously-prepared meals and our dear friends at our table...and then, with the Northwest light departing as quickly as it can, the day is over, with dishes still being washed and laments that there was not even any time for a quick nap.
Sunday night, when the one day of the week not programmed has passed...has been wasted somewhat by late sleep, and the remainder used for an outing with my one child still reachable, my 14-year-old son, who makes strange noises on the phone with his male friends, and always lifts his shirt to peer at his "six pack" (not from working out but from sheer skinniness) when passing by a mirror. Even he is too old for the child-centered fun that forms the best memories of our family Sundays, and so we snatched another friend and her three little ones and headed for lunch at Noah's Bagels and then to the Museum of History and Industry with its re-created boardwalk streets, enlarged old photos and plenty of buttons to push, tactile examples to feel, and voices from the past to hear. It was wonderful, and the little ones were adorable, and once again I am reminded that they are not MINE and the smiles and joys belong to me only fleetingly and to their mother completely.
The weather is cold; the sky gray; I wore gray today to match.
The passing of time is quite a punishment. Last night I went to the box where I had stashed all the photos, slides and mementos shipped to me when my siblings cleared out my parents' house after my dad passed away. My mother preceded him in death and he was so devastated he did not change the house at all. Her clothes remained on their hangers in the closet, and in her drawers in the dresser. Her glasses remained on her side of the bed. Everything stayed as if he expected her back momentarily. So I was putting back something in the box, and on top saw something in his handwriting. I removed a yellowed multi-page card he had fashioned--a Valentine--in which he had written all the years they were together, and pasted in photos from their past. He put in funny captions and words of love, and after writing out each year from 1939-2000, concluded "I will love you forever."
Cheap trick. I cried like...well, THEIR baby.
Musn't waste time. But on the other hand, I want to keep it from going on...which is why I bug people completely by taking masses of photos. I don't want to lose the moment, and by having photos, especially the digital ones that entertain me as a slideshow on my screen saver, I can savor that time again.
So it's Sunday night. Soon I'll go with my husband to take our daughter back to her sorority for another week apart from us. And I must get productive; I must not procrastinate by blogging, or by doing the REALLY tempting thing--downloading the photos from today--but it's Sunday; can't we just hold onto these moments when our family is almost complete--before the press of a new week begins?
