(For Earthlings, especially those born on the summer solstice… in the northern hemisphere)
Let us tilt ourselves sunward then, we northerners, celebrating more hours of light than dark, the sun chugging along its highest path through the sky,
mindful that our southern neighbors on the planet are turning their faces into the shortest day of the year, the sun’s lowest path through the sky—
each solstice a stoppage, when the sun appears to pause as if to consider, if not all the planets, perhaps this one blue marble that humans call home,
some of us lifting our faces into so much gushing brightness, some of us hunkering down in the dark, waiting for the light to return.
•••
Solargraph photo by Bret Culp / recording the sun’s path over time
“A solargraph is a long-duration pinhole photograph that records the sun’s repeated movement across the sky. It is usually made with photographic paper placed inside a simple camera and left in one position for an extended period. The resulting image often shows multiple solar arcs, along with interruptions caused by cloud cover, weather, and seasonal change.” —Bret Culp
While she is away, Katie texts to say that we who are watering in her absence should feel free to pluck and eat the tiny rubies masquerading as strawberries in her garden.
“They’re small, but mighty,” she writes.
Thinking of her fledgling crop, I go to my backyard to water and peer at Juliet who grows taller each day and now sports 12 green mini Romas on her octopus arms, tomatoes in gestation.
“Look at you grow those babies,” I tell her, noticing that two of her offspring are beginning to pinken. When they go glossy red and come off easily in the hand, I look forward to popping the first one in my mouth to feel its squish.
I think of the late husband, the last one to grow tomatoes in our yard, and Buddy dog, who liked to snatch them off the vine and gulp them whole. Now, sans husband and dog, the tomatoes will be mine to eat and share.
“Tomatoes for strawberries,” I will tell Katie when she returns, looking forward to trading small baskets of our respective crops. Even if our gardens produce only a few tiny gems, I can already smell the vegetal fragrance, savor summer’s sweetness on my eager tongue.
I spent afternoons mostly atop a lifeguard chair six feet above the deck of Roseville High School pool—when I wasn’t taking a turn standing on the opposite side of the deck, twirling my lanyard-tethered Acme Thunderer around a couple of fingers.
I spent mornings trying to coax little kids into gently settling their faces on the surface of liquid turquoise, to blow bubbles, to dunk themselves, bob up and down hanging onto the pool gutter practicing breathing and breath-holding, to float on their backs, small chests thrust to the sky, learning to trust the miracle of water supporting them.
I spent evenings coaching the synchronized swim team I’d joined as an 11-year-old. My sister, two years younger and always more physically adept, caught on quickly, little fish that she was. I was slower but determined to master the three basic stunts—kip, dolphin and somersub—that we performed at meets throughout the summer, and to blend those stunts and other tricky moves upside down in the water with music and a teammate or two or more, which was where the “synchronized” part came in.
I often worked five 12-hour days, then only five or six hours on a Saturday. I loved it all.
My uniform consisted of a red bikini when I was lifeguarding or coaching, a red tank suit when teaching because small, graspy hands could inadvertently prompt what would later be called a wardrobe malfunction. And though I weighed 100 pounds soaking wet and barely filled out an A cup, none of us teenage girl instructors wanted to risk inadvertent exposure.
As if, afternoons, we weren’t showing off most of our bikini’d bodies anyway, our male colleagues outfitted in baggy red trunks over their Speedos, with their taut middles and swim-team muscled arms, all of us patrolling the deck in flip-flops, serious about pool safety. Acme Thunderers twirling like slingshots, we’d occasionally blow them to get some kid’s attention, our peeling noses slathered in zinc oxide, and, as summer wore on, the tops of burnt shoulders and feet, too. T-shirt for sun protection, usually a floppy red hat. Mirrored Wayfarers protected our eyes.
You were not properly dressed for lifeguarding without your whistle and your Wayfarers. I’d learned that as a water safety aide helping instructors and watching lifeguards at the pool years before I became one.
We used to joke, when we saw our pool friends in non-summer times, “You look different in clothes.” We knew we were lucky not to be toiling in fast food or scooping ice cream like so many of our school friends. We practiced math taking attendance and a quarter from each kid who came to swim. (I figured out geometry years after I’d more or less failed it by plotting synchronized swimming routines for six or eight girls.) We learned chemistry by performing three-times-a-day water tests to check the pH and acid levels. We taught each other what we needed to know about opening the pool, resupplying toilet paper in the bathrooms, locking up at night.
A half century later, I wonder what the grown-up bosses we rarely saw were thinking, how impossibly young we were to be trusted with so much responsibility.
We didn’t think of ourselves as cool or confident or accomplished, though I realize now that we were all three, frying under the bicentennial summer sun in that concrete chapel of chlorine with so, so much life ahead of us.
•••
With appreciation for and love to all my pool buddies still in this world and the ones who became heavenly bodies, swimming happily, I hope, in the mystery.
Today that would be me, figuring out the drip system routine for just part of the magnificence on the corner of the Santa Ynez garden goddess.
I had another one next door years ago named Inez, who politely asked if she could plant the strip between her apartment building and my house, and, after I eagerly agreed, she filled it with succulents and ferns, gardenias and roses and canna lilies that grow a foot taller than me each summer.
Before she moved away, Inez made me promise to take care of that strip of loveliness, which I still do.
But Katie, the young garden goddess who lives in an apartment on the corner, has turned that formerly bleh swatch of weedy “lawn” into bordered beds profuse with foliage. In her absence three of us tend the acreage I think of as hers—a volunteer labor of love that has me stretching long hoses across the sidewalk to water beds of tall daisies and even taller bamboo.
I don’t know what I’m doing, but I talk to the plants anyway, a rah-rah without pompoms: “Atta girl, you pop out those purple flowers.” “Good going, you tall fellas.” “C’mon, little one, here’s some water—perk up now.”
When I’m finished, walking home to my little front yard, it looks, I think, like a kindergarten—a starter garden, which it is. But my cosmos are still growing tall, and the red salvia is already starting to bush out, though one of the lupines has died, and the new black-eyed Susan wilts every afternoon in the heat.
But I take up my own hose, aiming the magic water wand at the little sprouts. “Keep going,” I tell them. “One of these days you’re gonna be as big and strong as the big kids down the street.”
It all comes down to water and love. As they dampen under their daily shower, I feel the newbies rise a little, stretch their roots a bit more, getting on with the business of growth.
(Top) Passion flower in the (above) garden goddess’s garden / Photos: Jan Haag
We packed this very room, the sanctuary, really, with more people than expected
for the Lavender Chorus debut on Pride weekend in our city, two of us staunch allies among
many cheering and tearing at each moving song, celebrating diversity in harmony. We came
to hear our dear friend raise her voice in song, that voice ringing from our high school stage
as we two played in the orchestra. This afternoon we sat in a pew among hundreds, thinking of those
we’ve known more jeered than cheered for who they are or were, swept up in harmonic hope as this new chorus sang,
In this very room there’s quite enough love for all of us, and in this very room there’s quite enough joy for all of us,
and there’s quite enough hope and quite enough power to chase away any gloom, for love, our love, is in this very room.
As it was this day, may it forever be.
•••
Lyrics from “In This Very Room” by Ron and Carol Harris.
Thanks to Lisa Morgan for her good company in so many musical events since our high school days.
(Top) The Sacramento Lavender Chorus debuts under the direction of Jim Parr Jr. at Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento; (above) Martha Kight, tenor in the Sacramento Lavender Chorus, with Jan Haag after the concert. (Photo: Lisa Morgan)
As family members look on, Henry double-dunks two balls and declares, “bassa-bah,”
in the new basket on the brightly colored stand a bit taller than he is, gleefully chasing the rollers-away
to retrieve ’em and dunk ’em again on the same day the Knicks win their first NBA championship
in 53 years. We grownups are oblivious to the celebrations in New York, so focused
on the red-haired boy and his equally red-haired little sister chasing down bassa-bahs
indoors at home to the cheers of their loved ones, all of us grinning through crumbly bites
of mini chocolate cupcakes— could anything be sweeter?— on this hot day in June.
•••
With thanks and love to my fam who made the babies, one generation after another, and to us lucky aunts and uncs who get to enjoy them!
(Top) Henry double dunks his new “bassa bahs”; (above) cupcake time with his mom, Lauren Just Giel, and grandparents Donna and Eric Just (Photos by Great Aunt Jan)
Güd wrtr 