Click on Marianne's photo to go to her publisher's website and look at her new book, Growing Up Delicious.
A river of humanity flows by my backyard. Walkers, roller-bladers, runners and cyclists use the bike path from first light to dusk. From my spot weeding a flowerbed I heard a woman say to her companion, ‘I just don’t know what it all means’, as they strode past.
“Did you hear that, Nuala?” I asked. Nuala always does me the courtesy of looking at me when I speak to her as though I were the most interesting conversationalist she has ever met.
“Do you know what it all means?” I asked.
She turned around, ran across the lawn and brought back her neon pink tennis ball and dropped it at my feet.
“Woof.” She said.
I’ve learned dog and know that means ‘throw the ball for me.’ And I did until Nuala collapsed, belly-down, on the grass and gave me a big, black-lipped grin.
Apparently this is what it all means. There’s no need to talk it all to death, agonize, worry or plan, plan, plan.
‘I just don’t know what it all means.’ Its funny how sound can carry on a clear day and sometimes you hear just what you’re supposed to hear though the words weren’t meant for you.
I struggled with the ‘need to know’ before and after brain surgery. I wanted being scared shitless to mean something. I felt desperate to figure out what it meant, was convinced if I thought about it long enough it would come to me.
Sitting in the grass with Nuala under an electric-blue sky, watching her nose work overtime in the fragrant breezes of spring…I thought it doesn’t mean anything. It just is. Like the violets and dandelions fighting for world dominance, the pink tennis ball. It all just is.
Nuala wouldn’t even ask the question.
Marianne Banks
A river of humanity flows by my backyard. Walkers, roller-bladers, runners and cyclists use the bike path from first light to dusk. From my spot weeding a flowerbed I heard a woman say to her companion, ‘I just don’t know what it all means’, as they strode past.
“Did you hear that, Nuala?” I asked. Nuala always does me the courtesy of looking at me when I speak to her as though I were the most interesting conversationalist she has ever met.
“Do you know what it all means?” I asked.
She turned around, ran across the lawn and brought back her neon pink tennis ball and dropped it at my feet.
“Woof.” She said.
I’ve learned dog and know that means ‘throw the ball for me.’ And I did until Nuala collapsed, belly-down, on the grass and gave me a big, black-lipped grin.
Apparently this is what it all means. There’s no need to talk it all to death, agonize, worry or plan, plan, plan.
‘I just don’t know what it all means.’ Its funny how sound can carry on a clear day and sometimes you hear just what you’re supposed to hear though the words weren’t meant for you.
I struggled with the ‘need to know’ before and after brain surgery. I wanted being scared shitless to mean something. I felt desperate to figure out what it meant, was convinced if I thought about it long enough it would come to me.
Sitting in the grass with Nuala under an electric-blue sky, watching her nose work overtime in the fragrant breezes of spring…I thought it doesn’t mean anything. It just is. Like the violets and dandelions fighting for world dominance, the pink tennis ball. It all just is.
Nuala wouldn’t even ask the question.
Marianne Banks