Hydrangea Lessons, by Molly Remer

How to create a ritual:
Look at the sky.
Touch your skin.
Breathe deep in your belly.
Feel your heart beat.
Stand on the earth.
Let life carry you.

September 2024:

It is now that slender bush clover makes flower crowns along the roadside and coreopsis lifts its yellow faces to the sky. There is change in the air, whispering on cooling winds and shrieking by above the field on the feathers of broad-winged hawks. The last cicadas continue to drone and the apples hang rosy on the trees. The deck bears a sprinkling of yellow walnut leaves, and I picked up a brown and green patterned oak leaf to press into the pages of my prayers. It is now that I pause to steep, to listen to myself before pressing onward into the final part of the year. There is both an invitation and a summons here, to evaluate and renew, to consider the pace of life and whether to ease off or push onward. It is now that I remember that restoration is the antidote to depletion and I gather myself up, tenderly calling the fragments home, recollecting myself and taking time to look at where I am and what I have and what I’ve chosen. There are crows calling at the end of the driveway. I keep my eyes open for any passing monarchs. There is a slight hint of spiced pumpkin on the wind. The Virginia creeper has darkened to rusty red. 

My blue hydrangeas are finally in bloom. I watch a blue tailed skink look for water, breath moving in and out, tiny eyes blinking, and mouth opening and closing. When I sneeze, it pokes its head around and looks at me. Despite how it all spins, despite the bumps and wrinkles, bruises and stains of a full and ordinary life, I sustain myself each and every day through this immersion into the sacred, dialoguing with divinity, and keeping company with both change and joy.

September 2024:

When my grandmother died eleven years ago, I planted blue hydrangeas in her memory. They don’t bloom reliably, occasionally putting on large flowers right before the first frost, sometimes blooming in summer before humidity bows them over, most years not blooming at all, though the plants are hale and hearty, tall and strong, great bushes of wide, green leaves and energetic stems. This fall, they are all in bloom or close to it, one plant with great, round globes of blue flowers that have lasted for weeks without faltering. Today, as we pass, I say, “looks like they’re all going to bloom, even that first original memorial one is lifting its small puff of rebellion.” My husband looks at the sky and says, “there’s a puff of rebellion up here too.” And sure enough, there’s one small cloud in an otherwise wide sea of deep, bright, cloudless blue. “You cannot stifle me. I am here and will be seen!” I laugh, speaking for the cloud. At home, though, sitting on the back porch listening to the clear, sweet breeze stirring the trees and skimming light tickles across my legs, I think about small puffs of rebellion and small fists of resistance, how we claim our own spaces and our own lives and our own voices, lifting what we have to offer up with both tender hope and fierce persistence. Yes, we need to unclench our lives, to relax our striving and allow ourselves to be carried with ease on the currents of our days. So, too, do we need to paddle sometimes, to seize what we long for, to actively stitch our dreams into the fabric of our lives where they can become real instead of floating daydreams. You cannot tell a river no even though it is the epitome of what it means to flow. 

May we learn from unexpected allies, allies of root and stone, of current and cloud.  May we practice aligning our lives with Earth’s lessons, those of above and those of below. May we create lives that nourish and sustain us as we lift our fists and watch the clouds.

October, 2024:

This morning, the air is suddenly cool enough that we wear sweatshirts as we walk. I wonder now if the rest of my hydrangeas will make it to full blooming before the first frost. Hornets have taken up residence in my lilac bushes. Those never bloomed this year. I find a soft gray feather on the gravel and a white rock with a miniature cavern of sparkly, gray crystals. The iris are sprouting up again, even though it is fall, thin green blades reaching up into the sun, confused by the changing rhythms of a changing Earth. We decided to pick our apples yesterday, and there’s now an apple pancake in the oven. I topped it with lots of cinnamon. I feel awash with ideas for the year to come, pondering so much possibility that I feel too small to hold it all. I am tired of feeling like I am just a to-do list on legs, and yet, I remember what I remembered during a recent podcast interview. We all have sky and we all have skin. That means there is something sacred here, right where we are. I feel the sweet, clear stirrings of autumn air across my legs and face. In this moment, I let life carry me. 

October 2024:

Last night, as the nearly full moon rose and darkness fell, we slipped outside to see the comet finally lifting above the trees. We could see it dimly above the studio roof, trailing tail a faint white wisp in the moon bright sky. We cut my hydrangeas then, my roses too, first frost in the forecast. Planted eleven years ago in honor of my maternal grandmother it makes me sad to cut them, these bounteous blue blooms that have brought me such delight this year. It was in October, thirty-five years ago that my maternal grandfather died. October seven years ago that my last grandmother died, this season, holding both symbolic and personal reflections of the ancestors. And, somehow now, I stand here apologizing as I slice through these healthy stems and carry an armful of blue blooms inside to nestle into red vases. I left those still in bud on the bushes, in case it doesn’t frost, in case they might yet open, but frost it does, the field in morning a sparkling white sea of shining grasses and the hydrangeas dusted with a fine glittering coat. When we return from our walk, the sun has reached the plants, and now instead of sparkling they have succumbed fully to the cold, final buds leaning over in wilted surrender.  I pause by them, running my fingers over the now limp, darkened leaves, thinking about all we love and yet cannot save. 

November 2024:

Today, I sit in the falling leaves, the wilted mulberries, the frost nipped hydrangeas, the patient and resilient oaks, thinking about privilege and power, about purpose and passion, about how some are allowed to thrive and flourish, and others are ground to dust. I think about the drive to create, to make and share, to offer and shine, and how this is the seed of potential in all beings, a birthright, an invitation, a bright and glowing possibility, a promise, a prayer, granted to some, denied to many. This injustice can bow us to the ground with the weight of it, can crumble the spirit, and dim our shine, and silence our sharing, and squelch that spark of the infinite, that so determinedly has been brought into form through us, still alight in our own chests, no matter how many forces conspire to consume, control and destroy. We have a responsibility to all who are silenced and unheard, all who are suppressed and denied, to be here, to refuse to surrender goodness, beauty, truth, magic, possibility, passion, and purpose. We must keep the torch lit. We must remember that for all those who act to suppress and stifle, who act to compress and to kill, there are those who act to replenish, to reach and to raise, those who will keep the fire burning and the cauldron tended on long, dark nights in the cold, when we fear there is no one left to care. May we never forget that we are the hope, we are the hands, we are the torch and the tea, the blossom and the fruit, a circle, still singing among all that screams and shouts.

December 2024:

The blooms in the red vase on my table do not wilt and die, they unexpectedly dry instead, into beautiful globes of perfectly dried blue flowers, this year’s hydrangea lessons preserved of their own accord, in their own wisdom, in their own fragile way. In December, I put them into old wine bottles, no more water required, and they sit there together, puffs of resistance still lifted under a painting that once hung in my grandmother’s house and that now hangs on my own kitchen wall.