I think often of my friend Frances, and more so in the spring and summer when I am engaging in yardwork and gardening. Frances and I met at a self-help group in Anchorage in the mid-eighties when I was 25 and she was in her middle sixties. She was a tiny, smiling thing, unabashedly sporting a wig, who took to telling people that she was my grandmother. She and I shared much tea and sympathy over the years.
When my husband and I left Anchorage in 1988, Frances and I stayed in touch via letter and phone call. Her letters were always an event, replete with tiny drawings and descriptions of her exploits as a “Lady Gardener.” While my dear old Uncle Brooks would have described her miniature chainsaw as having been “picked most too soon,” Frances simply referred to it and her other tools with her favorite epithet, as in “a Lady Gardener chainsaw.” Throughout the years, whenever I bought something of that nature that suited my size and strength, Uncle Brooks and Frances vied for dominance in helping me describe it; this mental tug-of-war sometimes led to such descriptions as a “Lady Gardener weed trimmer that was probably picked most too soon.” My husband and I, to this day, still bandy these terms about whenever we get a chance.
Frances had no children, and the only family member that I knew about (besides her husband Bill, who predeceased her) was a niece in Wyoming. Sometime around 2000, I asked as casually as possible for the contact information for said niece. I mumbled something about wanting to send Christmas cards to the niece, because any family of Frances’ was family of me also—a gently selective truth that Frances declined to call me out on. My sneakiness notwithstanding, I was glad to have made this connection, because that was how I managed to receive Frances’ death notice in 2005. Included in the notice was this poem written by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
My candle burns at both ends,
It will not last the night.
But ah, my foes and oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light.
I had yet another occasion to think of Frances a few days ago, when I bought what must truly be the quintessential Lady Gardner chainsaw. It has a four-inch blade, runs off a 10.8-volt battery, and is cuter than a whole basket of speckled pups. It also lends itself well to a Charlie’s Angels pose.
I’m taking down these willow branches in your honor, my dear friend. It pleases me to think that you might be proud.
I remember your calling me to tell me of Frances’s passing.
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote beautiful poetry. I remember a poem she wrote called The Blue Flag in the Bog. I had to ask younger daughter to explain what it meant, with apologies to Mama. She would quote “A poem should not mean, but be” and she said, what the poet meant was what he said, if he meant something else he would have said something else.
The question was, about the poem, why does Earth look so burned and blasted. Alice’s answer was, that these are souls headed to heaven and anything else will appear that way in comparison. The narrator however was a young girl who wasn’t quite able to leave Earth behind so she was allowed to bring a blue flower and plant it in heaven.
Fascinating poem! It reads more like Armageddon than a jaded view. . .I wonder if World War I had anything to do with it??? Anyway, I like the idea that a poem is an entity unto itself, separate from the poet, and it can “mean” all kinds of things.
Here’s another short one from Edna:
Safe upon the solid rock
The ugly houses stand.
Come and see my shining palace
Built upon the sand!
I used to think about that whenever the James would flood some houses, or some Outer Banks houses would slide into the Atlantic.