Tag: beauty

reflecting, remembering

Watching the Sky

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Fourth of July has passed for another year. On Saturday night, Jeff and I fell asleep to the sound of booming skies, carried to us from around the whole Bay Area. For several years, we’d climbed to the strip of land that attaches itself to our property to the South East of our property – a strip of land that is almost sold to the people whose house behind ours faces a different street – to watch the fireworks from what we had come to call “The Panhandle.” Not this year. We started to go to bed earlier during COVID – waking earlier each morning, too – and so we were in bed at the end of daylight.

The booms from all over the area filled the air as I lay awake, always falling asleep later than Jeff, who falls into sleep soon after his head hits the pillow. I listened for a while before I, too, fell asleep. As I listened, the sounds took me back to a Fourth of July many years ago.

Some memories shine, as if lit by a magic light from within.

I was little, probably four or five. I lay on a hill in Washington Park on the North Side of Milwaukee, next to my Dad. I expect that my mother and the baby, Suzie, and probably my big brother, Ronnie, were with us, but they did not show themselves in the memory. It’s as if Daddy and I were alone on the hill. Of the five of us, Dad – I later took to calling him FRB, a nickname which stuck with the whole family – holds center stage in the memory. He was the one in our house who talked the most, an extravert who lived with four introverts.

Daddy watched the fireworks with his extraversion on full display, along with the fireworks. “OOOOOH,” he said, loudly. “AHHHH,” the sound followed. With each burst of light, a new sound escaped from Daddy. “OHHH…” he claimed, again. I lay close to his side on the side of the hill. While the fireworks flashed overhead, I turned to watch Daddy as enjoyment and wonder flowed from him.

*

Why do some memories stick, and not others? I’d like to know. Every Fourth of July, I think of those moments, moments now over 70 years old, as the fireworks boom overhead. I’m still there on that hill, laying close to my Daddy, his joy spreading along the grass to me.

*

For many years now, the dry days of summer in Northern California surround me. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Mt. Shasta in the distance, from the Warner Valley, CA, 06/9/2026

beauty

the gift

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Christmas before last, Jeff gifted me a wonderful altar to be hung on the wall of my new office. When my own room in our house was being transformed into a guest room and bath, I had moved to a wonderful, bright room that opened to the dining room. I’m sitting here now, as I write my week’s addition to thewisdomyears.org, enjoying the beautiful, well-lit room. I always sit in a wing back chair, one of two that had been in Jeff’s mother’s living room before she passed. I love my space – “a room of one’s own.”

As I moved from the dark room down the dark hallway from the kitchen, the perfect place to hang the altar I’d received as a gift arrived, along with the larger, bright space. As I write now, I sit in my favorite place, the open window on my right, and the beautiful wooden altar in my view. At the beginning, after the altar had been hung, I took my time finding just the right objects and pictures to sit on its shelves. The ribbons I hung outside to be blessed by St. Brigid hang at the side, a beautiful, colorful origami helmet in a clear box is carefully set on the top shelf. I enjoy the altar, sometimes getting up from my comfortable chair to take something down, to move a small china vase.

*

Last weekend, our nephew Rainier, Lia and Celeste, who is six years old now, in the first grade, visited us on a sunny Sunday afternoon. They have exchanged houses for a few weeks with a couple who has roots in Seattle. We enjoyed a barbecue together, sitting in the early summer yard, lush green this time of year. Lia had brought the last of an apple pie, and Jeff delivered large pieces of pie to each of us, apple pie with a topping of vanilla ice cream. Soon after we’d finished supper, it was time for the family of three to go home; ever since she was an infant, Rainier and Lia have a bedtime ritual, an early bedtime for Celeste. The ritual keeps everyone sane! – and allows for smooth days with busy schedules for the whole family.

And so Lia and Rainier and Jeff and I gathered their belongings and helped them fill their car. Celeste came up to me, her small hand holding two tiny flowers in her fingers. She raised them so that I could see, offering the gift to me. I looked at the gift as I took the flowers into my fingers. “Oh!” I said: “I know exactly where these go!”

Celeste was curious then as we walked into my bright office and stood in front of the beautiful wooden altar. I took a tiny clay vase off a tiny shelf and carefully placed the gift in the vase. “There!” I said: “It’s perfect! Thank you for the gift, Celeste!”

I stood back to admire the addition to my altar. Celeste stood at my side, looking up at the vase that held her gift. Then, she looked at me. She surprised me; she moved to face me and opened her arms and hugged me, her arms fitting around my waist. Then she looked up at me. “Thank you,” I said.

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Red dragonfly

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I never thought to notice you.
I am sitting on the bench in the hot noonday sun when you join me.
You must feel safe
because you fly away and re-join me.
Now you hunker down with your wings flat on the gray board.
Your furry back arches behind your big black eyes.
I hear your fine wings: “click-click-click.”

There you go – away again.
But you return another time.

You sit closer to me,
making a friend.

Mary Elyn Bahlert, Baileys Harbor, 2024

At the Ridges’ Shore, Baileys Harbor, WI, 5/2025 Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert

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Bird-watching

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Jeff and I are watching the birds again. Our 100+ year old Craftsman home sits on its lot high above the sidewalks on our street, and so we have no window coverings. Our home is a birdhouse of its own! Outside the front window is a small grey birdhouse, currently uninhabited. Outside the windows of the kitchen stands a lovely crepe myrtle, joined by a beautiful birdhouse made by our friend Jim, and added to the yard this past winter. A circle of wooden lawn chairs in the yard gives the best view of who is moving into the wooden house in the side yard.

Jeff and I sit as quietly as we can in the wooden chairs, watching the titmice make a new home for their nest. The birds are busy; they don’t seem at all interested in us, the bigger creatures who also inhabit this part of the world. And so even as we move around, the couple does not stop their hard work, making room for eggs and soon, little titmice who will be coming into the big world that surrounds them.

I always like the little birds. Most find me unimportant as I observe them. But when the hummingbirds come into the yard, they are aggressive little creatures, sometimes buzzing close to my head as they observe this other strange, big – huge – creature. Quickly enough, the hummingbirds continue buzzing on to other places, out of sight.

I don’t think I have the patience to go about being a true bird watcher. I’ve tried. And I’ve seen some wonderful feathered creatures over the years, some who have seemed as interested in me as I am in them. But I do like to notice the birds who are our neighbors in our place in the city. They’re crafty – finding exactly what they need to make a cozy home in this busy urban area.

The new home of our titmouse neighbors! Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2/2026

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winter

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Winters were tough – cold, with lots of snow – when I was a child growing up in Milwaukee. Many of my memories include cold, gray skies, and snow. Although climate change has affected snowfall in later years, I recall vividly when I lived on Martin Drive in Milwaukee, in an apartment that came without a garage. Winter mornings, as I prepared to drive to Waukesha – west of Milwaukee – I’d often have to start the car, run the engine, and get out to scrape ice off the windshield before I drove away from the street – hoping I’d be able to get back into a car already warm, hoping that I’d make it to Waukesha without running into a pileup.

Ugh.

And as I scraped the windows, I remember clearly thinking, again and again: “who would live in this climate?” Maybe I was planning ahead – unknown to even me – for another future.

Today, a headline in the New York Times reads: Record Snowfall Slams New England as New York Digs Out.
Ugh. I can relate. And I’m grateful to have had a busy morning here in Oakland, running a list of errands as I enjoy a sunny day. Again. We’ve had a week of rain, and the forecast is for more rain this week. We’re always grateful for rain, even in years when the rain is unrelenting. The Bay Area is not “sunny California,” which I quickly learned during my first winter, 1981-1982, an El Nino year. Instead of sunny days, I walked all over Berkeley in the rain. I had my mother send a box of my clothes that I’d failed to pack when I left Milwaukee. I needed clothes suitable for rain.

But this winter we’ve had plenty of rain, and another storm is on the way. It’s about time for spring to arrive full force, as the neighborhood trees, already budding, call out.

But I miss the snow, sometimes. I miss those wind-less snow falls, when the snow falls straight from the sky and leaves a blanket on the streets. In one memory, I watched late into the evening the snow fall, gentle, onto the lawn in front of my apartment building. Some memories of snow are gentle, like the snow.

And I don’t miss the times I skidded to a stop at a stop light – or even on the freeway, driving someone else’s car. Ugh. Ugh.

Spring in Oakland – photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2/11/2026