I’m thrilled to plant Idun’s beautiful essay and poem in the Community Garden today. As you’ll see from her writing, she’s tapping into the goodness that arrives when we share our creativity with safe others, and how this is one of our most potent pathways to feeing connected and grounded in this rapidly changing world. She’s also writing beautifully about the passage of time, and the pain of longing that invariably accompanies loving deeply. I’m delighted that this Community Garden has been a safe place for so many members of our community to share their creativity and help us all make sense of the grief-love-longing that we, as sensitives, feel daily.
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Dear Community Garden,
I wrote this poem one spring day last year. I was grieving that my son was leaving primary school and becoming a teenager. When this poem came to me, I had not written for many months and never written a poem in English before (English is my second language).
The previous fall (before the English poem) my first book got published – an illustrated children’s poem book. I really enjoyed writing the book, but did not enjoy the publication process. My anxiety in the last few months before the book came out was worse than usual and even worse in the months after the publication. I was fearing bad reviews, dreading the public “duties” I felt was expected of me following the publication, and struggling with saying no and withholding my own boundaries.
I think it is strange and quite contradictory that the same person who enjoys her own company enough to sit hours by herself writing, is the same person who is expected to be “all out there” when the book moves out of the house and onto the shelves.
My identity as a writer had been faltering since the publication – why should I write when I could not cope in the publication process? It felt pointless. It felt too lonely writing just for myself, and too public and exposed to publish. I longed for a community where I felt safe sharing my work.
Then one day about half a year after the book came out I came home one morning after bicycling with my son halfway to his school. I sat down at my computer like I usually do (even though I no longer expected to write something) and discovered that an email from Sheryl about the Community Garden was waiting for me in my inbox. Suddenly a spark hit me and I found myself writing this poem.
When I look back now, I can see that this poem was the start of something. I have not written any more poems in English since, but the following summer I wrote some personal essays on a private blog, in the fall I wrote a short story, and in February I started writing children’s poems again. I also started an advent calendar sharing some poems I like and some I have written myself with family and friends, and have kept sending out a poem every Monday since new year.
If I will publish any more books I am unsure of. Maybe, maybe not. The most important thing is that the access to my creativity is better now.
I keep a beautiful paper calendar on my desk to help me organize my life. Each week there is a quote, and this week’s quote says “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see” (Edgar Degas).
I don’t completely agree with Mr Degas, but I think he is on to something. In my experience it is important that there is some kind of connection for creativity to be able to flow. I don’t think creativity can exist in a vacuum. It needs to be part of a conversation between the world and you and you and the world, and for me at least, I have to feel reasonably safe to tap into this flow. We need each other, we need gardens of community, we need safe spaces to share and be seen.
I think art is both what you see, and what you make others see.
To look
In Japan they have a ritual.
It is called Hanami, and it simply means
to look at flowers –
the cherry blossoms
that bloom so briefly
they are almost gone before they open up
to the sun, but now it is raining,
not a cold winter rain, but a mild
spring clean for my soul
while I stand here watching
a pink magnolia flower
I passed by on my detour back home.
I stand here with nothing in my hands
but wonder, I stand here with nothing in my heart
but joy and grief, I stand here
with my yellow bicycle parked next to me
still warm and damp from the ride with my son
following him halfway to his school.
On our rides we talk and laugh and move –
the fresh air in our mouths,
the joy of living in our legs.
It feels like yesterday
I used to come with him all the way to the classroom door.
It feels like yesterday
he didn’t want to let me go when we said goodbye.
In the fall
he will be a teenager.
In the fall
he will ride by himself to his new school.
In the fall
the spring is over.
Last week we saw our reflections in the mirror
and my son said: “Look mum, soon I will be taller than you”.
He put his hand
on top of my head
and smiled at me.
I smiled back at him
reluctant
and proud.
A Norwegian poet once wrote:
“To love is to lay the foundation stone for longing”
How can you love
a magnolia flower
that soon drops her petals to the ground?
How can you love
a child
that soon rides off without you?
I think of the Japanese people
standing still under the cherry trees
drinking in the blossoms with their eyes
and I think my most important ritual is this:
to look at a flower
to look at a child
in the spring.
Note: The Norwegian poet mentioned in the poem is Kolbein Falkeid, and the quote is freely translated by me from Norwegian to English.
I have a three year old son. This poem really spoke to me. Every day he’s more his own little person, and it just feels impossible to hold on. That little face, little voice, little foot. Every tomorrow I miss who he was yesterday. Every day feels so bittersweet. Thank you for sharing.
Dear Marci,
Thank you for reaching out and sharing. I think being a parent brings the greatest joys and the deepest sorrows in my life, and if I do not allow myself to grief the letting go-part, I miss out on much of the joy too. But it is so hard sometimes.
I love these last few lines from Mary Oliver’s poem In Blackwater Woods:
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
Warmly,
Idun
Beautiful poem! My only daughter just started kindergarten and realizing her little kid years are over hit me hard…. Even though they were incredibly difficult for me in a lot of ways!
It’s amazing that as mothers we pour so much into our kids only to have them leave one day. And this has been going on since the dawn of time, life really is bittersweet.
Thanks for sharing.
Dear Megan,
Thank you for your kind words, and for sharing.
I agree – the little kid years are both so incredible hard and beautiful. Now my son is 14 years old. In many ways, life is easier now than when he was little, but still, when I see photos of him from his childhood years, it brings tears to my eyes. It is truly bittersweet.
Warmly,
Idun
Tears while I make my tea, after dropping my son off at the bus stop.
Thank you for this moment.
Dear Lailah,
The tears
The tea
The time
passing by.
Sending you love ❤️
Warmly,
Idun
Takk Idun, for et nydelig dikt ❤️
My favorite book is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and I these words are sacred to me.
«I had known it would happen from the first time I held her- from that moment on, all her growing would be away from me. It is the fundamental unfairness of parenthood that if we do our jobs well, the deepest bond we are given will walk out the door with a wave over the shoulders. We get good training along the way. We learn to say have a great time sweetie, while we long to pull them back to safety».
I love this.
Thank you for reading and writing back, and for the beautiful and true words from Braiding Sweetgrass ❤️ I have that book on my reading list and I am looking forward to reading it even more now.
Thank you for this beautiful poem. It brought me to tears with its sweetness and I’m so grateful that it did. 🙂
Thank you for reading and writing back ❤️
Very moving. Thank you for sharing <3
Thank you for reading ❤️
Beautiful poem that encapsulates our children growing up and the love and loss. Thank you for sharing it. There is something so supportive and nourising for me in knowing that others are willing to observe and sit with these feelings in a world that often seems to want us to disconnect from this very source of joy, pain and life.