It's happening, part 2

After the creeping green of spring comes the fading yellow of summer. Lush hues give way to dry tones that hint of dust and earth. The colors start to look tired and depleted. It's so gradual that I don't even notice until suddenly, even the blue sky is worn thin. The summer heat feels shriveling, sucking moisture out and away heedlessly. It's not malicious, just thirsty. The sun stretches his reach and the days last until sweet evening coolness relieves the glare of day. The smell of mown grass mixes with a warm breeze to concoct a dizzying aroma.

The shift of the seasons promises change. New summertime adventures beckon with the promise of a fresh school year starting soon. Reinvention awaits; what will you do with the gift of revolving weeks?

Day 1: Sunrise

Did you know that two days after the Summer Solstice the sky gets light at 5:00 in the morning? I had no idea. Just as the sunlight stretched until well after 9:00 the night before, the day started to return well before the sun actually came up.

We left our house at 4:30, on a road filled with taillights and streetlights, wondering at all the people who seemed to have somewhere to go this early in the morning. The outline of the mountains on the right caught my attention - how could I see them so early? By 5:00, the answer was evident: the sun was coming up.

At first just a lightening along the edges of the mountains, then gradually a variation of color in the Eastern half of the sky. Like watching a sunset in reverse, I saw the light blue turn a faint greenish-gray color, then hints of yellow and orange appeared. Everything was pale, undertones of gray muting the colors. The clouds hovering above the mountains were alternately silhouetted by the light and illuminated from below. As we turned away from the mountains and headed across the West desert, I looked back to see real light beginning to build.

The distant mountains of the Salt Lake Valley became a scalloped edge of the flat desert with sudden beams of orange and yellow behind it. The bundled clouds turned lavendar and coral, and the empty Salt Flats took on a rosy hue. With the rushing of the car, the plains became rippled, like light on water. What was once empty space had become something lovely.

By 6:30 the sun was completely up, the landscape filled with normal hues and colors, the dramatic shading and coloring of the sunrise a fading memory. I fell asleep with the green sagebrush whipping past us and the blue sky above, yellow sunlight slanting across the car windows.

It's happening

Right now, all around us.

Spring.

It's deceptively gradual, that shift from winter snow to spring sun and rain. Here in Utah, we go back and forth half a dozen times, but once it happens, the colors arrive almost overnight. Suddenly tulips appear in reds, yellows, purples, and oranges so bright you can't help but crane your neck to get a second glimpse. Lavender and pink blossoms turn bare branches into something out of a Dr. Seuss book. The mountains, still majestically white and purple at the top, develop a creeping green that starts at the base and slowly works upward, overtaking the grayish purple brush and yellowed grass that covers the foothills. Soon all but a thin strip of recently uncovered mountain will be vibrant and verdant.

I love to watch the world come alive again. I love the warmth that emanates from the grass and the smell of dirt. After weeks of cold and wet, it's a promise of longer days and backyard barbecues and coming out of our caves to socialize once again. It means a generosity of time, rather than a burrowing, clutching grasp on daylight. The lonely months of winter will once again be replaced with the community months of summer. The sudden spring of plants, flowers, trees, and sky is hope that we can be renewed, too.

I'd like to call myself a writer...

...But judging from my complete inability to write and finish a post on this, my creative writing blog, for months, I think I had best relinquish the title until I can put my words where my mouth is. (Wait...)

In any event, this is an apology and a public avowal to do better. I've got writing on my mind, partially because I'm heart-sick for England, and partially because I've been very aware of how little writing I've done and how much I miss it.

So, here's my reaffirmation of my writing. Here I go. For reals, this time.

Promise.

Falling slowly

March 5, 2010

I am grateful, today, for the snow
that falls
slowly
but persistently

it wipes out the gray
and replaces it with white

it mutes the sound
of everything that goes unsaid

yesterday the news came
that a boy would not come home again
that a son
a brother
a cousin
an uncle
a nephew
a grandson
a friend
would not come home again

the emptiness is deafening
but the frozen flakes fall
accumulating slowly
and fill it until
it is not empty
just silent

Four years of cancer

I haven't written much about my dad's cancer, partially because I don't feel like garnering pity, but partially because it's hard to talk about. Hard to talk about it in a deep, meaningful, truthful way. I can spout answers to how he's doing, how we're dealing, in a very general way, but the truth? The deep, from my soul, truth?

I don't know if I can express that yet.

It's been four years, you would think I would have come to terms with cancer by now. And in most ways, I have. It's a part of our lives and it's the giant uncertainty that we live with.

But the future? What my dad having cancer really means?

I remember when I found out. I was walking across BYU campus through late afternoon sunlight and chilly winter air. My phone rang; it was my dad. He told me right away: "I have some bad news." I don't know what I said but I was in shock. A friend offered me a ride home; I accepted and we were halfway to the apartments before I remembered that I had driven that morning and my car was still on campus.

I spent the next week crying and trying not to cry and mostly, focusing really hard on not thinking about it. I felt like something had broken. Rachel called me one day while I was having lunch in the middle of the Wilkinson Center. I fought back tears and panic as I tried to reassure her that I was scared, too. I wanted to be home and at the same time, I didn't. I didn't want to look that word, "cancer", in the face. I was busy with work and school and I let that carry me.

Four years later, and the truth is, even though I have stopped trying to hide from cancer, I haven't really stopped trying to hide. I am still scared.

Driving to work

The sun is almost too bright against the melting snow along the roads. There are clouds in the sky, but they are fine and wispy, like the hair of a small blonde girl. I look for my mountains and cannot find them - the clouds come down the to ground. Timpanogos is waving proudly above them, only the tip of the horn visible. The clouds swirl and part; I glimpse the rock beyond them. With a whoosh of sunlight, they close again and I am left with only the hint and promise of something more.

Sunset in January

There are not many things that I like about January, but the sunsets are one of them. While the rest of the days are cold, gray, and monotonous, sunset is when the mountains and sky come alive.

There is a certain slant of light in the evenings when the sunlight hits the mountains and only the mountains. Golden and glorious, Timpanogos and Cascade mountains to the north and east are illuminated while the rest of the sky is shaded and slowly slips into dark blue. The lines and crevices of their faces come into sharper focus and the snow smoothes the slopes into gentle curves. Sometimes a little pink or orange fills the snow with colors and shatters the white and gray of our January landscape.

Even once the sun finishes its descent behind the Lake mountains in the west, Timpanogos and Cascade stay bright for a moment longer. They are luminous, almost like they absorbed and now reflect the light of the day. In those moments, I can't believe the mountains are real. They are too present, too distinct, too there.

For that moment, some haziness is removed and all is clear. The mind-numbing sameness of January days is lifted and the world becomes lovely. I can breathe in the promise of winter's sharp beauty.

And we're back

Back to writing, because I think part of me is dying without it. Literally, I can feel my skills and words fading without being put to regular use. I made it a New Year's resolution (because really, why not?) to write four times a month on this blog, which will hopefully translate into one post every week. I need this space to practice, even if no one is reading, and I need the goal and deadline to keep me motivated.

I've already missed two submission deadlines this year for magazines that I had every intention of submitting to. I don't want that to happen anymore. The only way to get 100 rejections this year is if I start sending out my material.

So we're back to where we began, a semi-public forum to rush write, brainstorm, revise, and get ready for publication. This is part of who I am; I want it back.

Ready, set...