The Time to Say Goodbye (Is Where We Find It)
Stewardship of place and object as life-affirming and generative
Look closely. Did you know that Daisy Fuentes (philanthropist, mogul, former MTV VJ, spouse of Richard Marx) was once the face of brooms? And just look at those bristles. Like whiskers on an old horse. This wasn’t some single-use junker. This thing has seen some dust bunnies!
I said goodbye to it yesterday. Oh, just for a few weeks and I’ll be back. But I do say goodbye to it when I leave. Who cares about an old broom (that I don’t even use)? We inherited it when we bought the place and I don’t have the heart to toss it out. It captivates me. It takes its place among a strategy of other hanging implements and I don’t see much reason to make my goodbye permanent.
Nothing to do with Daisy, really, but how does one’s face end up on a broom? What might it say about the buyer who could have picked any broom and chose the Daisy Fuentes broom? Whats more, what if these questions were asked in a story or its detail dropped into a poem? If I encountered that level of curious detail in writing I would be enamored with the writer’s mastery of minutiae.
I don’t even need to use my imagination. A Daisy Fuentes broom caught my attention and I didn’t ignore it. Now it’s writing fodder. Now something simple could become central to complexity.
About a year after we got married, my husband and I bought a simple house along a small creek. More residency than residence. There are no days off in the country; no more so than in the city where we spend most of our time.
It's writing of a different sort in the country. Contemplative. Slow writing like preparing and eating a slow meal. Still no shortage of interruptions—the ever-peeing dog is still 18 years-old and wanting, the neighbor is still too loud. But it’s as if I made a pact with this place. Something with the vows “All in good time” and “Don’t worry, it’ll all get done” and “Their noise was here before yours.” And then back to Daisy: “Honor the sacredness and sacrifice in everything.”
I recognize my impermanence within those vows. I am a speck in this beyond-human ecosystem and my husband and I are temporary stewards of what was already in place. The house was built in 1982 (The house before that floated down the road in a flood). The apple trees planted in 1989. They all predate my present, have given their living and inanimate lives here. I owe them respect, offer understanding if they’re tired, and still they give.
If this broom itself does nothing forevermore than hang from a nail, its detail will travel beyond itself in this Substack. Maybe I’ll include it in a story or poem. Maybe you will. P.L. Travers certainly made something of a broom (Mary Poppins). L. Frank Baum, too (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). And how is it he came to the idea of intoxicating his main characters in a field of poppies? Maybe, like me, simply watering the garden…
I said goodbye, as I always do, to the record player my husband bought me last winter. The Bella Donna album from our first record buying trip. And it just so happened, as we were packing the car, that the bellladonna lily near the passenger door had bloomed. Don’t you just love spotting that kind of coincidence? Again, nothing my imagination would have contrived. It was all laid out for me, as if to say, “Look what we’re doing when you’re not looking. Look what we can do for you when you are.” It helps that the lily is poisonous. Poison always adds to allure, eh?
So this doesn’t all come off as heavily sentimental or plaintive or contrived, here’s my new compost pile. Ain’t it a beaut? Have you ever fallen in love with a compost pile that’s always in the background working for you, chewing up your old junk? Well, it’s a luxury I know. I give it a big treat before we leave; yesterday, coffee grounds, veggie peels, something sticky, and an unfinished crust. The neighbor said her compost pile has snakes because they like the warmth.
And finally, an heirloom Pink Pearl apple. Snakes and apples? Broomsticks? Oh, what an eden! “Oh, what a world, what a world!”
That was yesterday and it was the first Pink Pearl I’ve ever seen or tasted. Needs a few more weeks to sweeten, so we’ll visit that tree in September. It really challenges the perception of what an apple could look like in a story. How do you even explain such a thing? That the center of an apple looks like rare steak? A bleeding heart?
The dictionary says bleeding heart can mean “dangerously softhearted.” Like a belladonna lily? Or the brave danger that possesses great writers to be obsessively watchful—to rescue the bleeding or sit vigil with the dying. Those memories never leave; that’s the danger and the reward.
To be dangerously softhearted speaks to present-mindedness. Respect for everything’s purpose and every organism’s selfhood. All existences. The indispensability in what all too often gets treated as disposable—human, animal, plastic. We don’t own, we steward. We don’t toss out, we transfer responsibility. Everything will take up a place beyond us. That must mean stories have no endings. That must mean we can be a little easier on ourselves with those last lines—they’re nothing if not openings to infinite others.
I think writers possess a particularly acute awareness of the fullness of the present. It proves there is no dullness anywhere, no boredom, just more and more story. And in leaving one present space for another, the power of saying goodbye—how it never means forever.
It scarcely takes no time to say goodbye. It’s a silent wink at the smallest detail and it can be a secret gesture that we stash in our heart. No one needs to know we say goodbye to a broom. Maybe someday you’ll share an elevator with Daisy Fuentes, and boy will you ever have a story to tell! Now you will, regardless. If only for having read this. Thank you for that.
Goodbye—and until next time.
