Rain, Water, and Reflecting on How You Are

On showing up

“But what if this is all there is?” asked bird.

“If this is all there is,” replied bear, “then what?”

…
📷: Fall Fell, Spring Sprung (32” tall x 32” wide)
…

“How are you?” I whisper.

“Like, how are you really?”

I didn’t expect an answer, but I had to ask.

Along the side of my house, I have two elevated vegetable beds.

Each is eight feet long by two feet wide.

Underneath each bed, I created a channel that collects water.

That water funnels to a trough between the beds.

In the fall and winter, rain from the south and east and west makes its way to these two unassuming beds leaned up against a nondescript house in Portland.

It’s journey of untold miles, percolating salt from the sea, pollen from Cascade pines, and minerals of bygone eras through 22 inches of soil hovering two feet off the ground.

What was once clear emerges an earthy dark brown, filling the trough slowly in ochre and clay.

When the trough is full, I scoop up the water and distribute it around my garden.

“A gift to you,” I say to apple and persimmon.

“A special treat,” I say to apricot and fern.

“You’re welcome,” I say to blackberry and flower.

The same flower that makes me smile when I see it bud.
The same flower that makes me cry when I think about my cat sunning himself there under the blackberry bush in the days before he died.

This morning as my breath fogged the air, I saw my reflection in the water.

And I paused long enough to look at myself, ripples in a trough.

“How are you?” I asked.
“Like, how are you really?”

How often do we ask ourselves this question?
How often do we linger long enough to respond?

A lifetime reflected in the ripples, gathered from every direction, percolating across time, through skin and marrow, into you, into me.

How are you? Like, how are you really?