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Betty Dalke Wathne

There is nothing more powerful or radical or stunningly beautiful than a woman who chooses to rebuild her life day after day, after day.  No matter how many pieces there are to pick up, or how many mistakes she must spin into gold

Cara Alwill Leyba

I admire the women I know who are chasing their goals, dreaming their dreams, being the architects of their own lives.  There is a sort of magic that illuminates an intentional life and shines onto those of us fortunate enough to know them. Some of us never get around to inventing ourselves and living our life, the one we were meant to.  And some of us are re-inventing ourselves, whether by choice or necessity.  It isn’t easy. It takes determination in the face of discouragement. It takes the radical strength of spinning mistakes into gold.  Most of all, it takes a hope – sometimes a distant one – that we might, in fact, fly.

My friend Stephanie didn’t expect the life she found herself in.  She expected to retire with her husband, and they found a beautiful home in North Carolina to enjoy. But her husband was taken by cancer.  And Stephanie, who is a woman of action, decided to make friends, to live a full life training her dogs and going to a trial or two every month.  One of her gifts is to express love through her marvelous cooking.  She started having dinner parties.  She found places for expert instruction in agility and obedience.  She gathered people around with her generous heart and delicious meals and sensible optimism.  She even decided to go all-in and help to get a rare breed – the Kooikerhondje – established in the U.S. 

So Stephanie, day after day, with effort and focus, filled her life with dogs, friends, training, trialing, trips to the Netherlands and to Ireland, and in doing so, she enriched the lives of those around her.  She doesn’t think of having dinner parties and making friends.  She hosts “family dinner”, and how fortunate her extended family is to be included! She is powerful and radical and stunningly beautiful. And boy, oh boy, does she fly!

My friend Meagan is a friend not because we’ve spent time together or because I know her very well.  We are friends because we both love Irish water spaniels.  That’s the way it works.  We are in the same clan.  We are part of a tribe.  I understand not all breeds inspire this kind of camaraderie amongst its admirers, but for Irish water spaniel owners, it’s a glorious fact. And part of the joy of being in a clan is celebrating the unique qualities and accomplishments of our fellow clan members.  So I delight in Meagan’s gifts as a writer.  Some of her writing is about her Irishers, particularly Donovan, who was related to my dogs, and became “our” dog because Meagan shared him with us.  Donovan found people and brought them together.  He was a true rescue dog – rescuing the humans around him over and over again. And we get to know those stories of Donovan’s magic through Meg’s stories.

Meagan also lives her dream.  She puts herself into the scary places. Many of us are too frightened to put ourselves forward at all.  It hurts to fail. It hurts to be rejected.  It hurts to be vulnerable.  But Meagan absolutely insists that she put herself forward as an actress and as a trapeze artist.  It’s a labor of love and courage and a lesson in trust – the ultimate vulnerability is to trust others – and it’s absolutely vital when one is flying through the air expecting to be caught. What if you fall?  What if, like Meagan, you fly?

There is freedom waiting for you 

On the breezes of the sky,

And you ask,

“What if I fall?”

Oh but my darling,

What if you fly?

Erin Hanson

“Maybe the world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us”

From “Franz Marc’s Blue Horses”

By Mary Oliver

February can be dark and grim in a snowy place. From my cabin on a windswept hill in New Hampshire, I am struck by the beauty of the sky and hills and the dark shapes of the forest rising above the open meadow. I love the subtle tones and wake early, stumbling into the great room and ignoring the dogs’ pleas to go out, as I’m eager to see the day emerge at dawn, whether shrouded in mist or sparkling with sun.  But I yearn for color – the lush greens and golds of the meadow in summer, the flame of sugar maples in autumn.  In this grey world of winter, the birds are the flowers….blue jays, the gang of Eastern bluebirds that stayed for the winter, and the cheerful cardinals. They come to the feeders on my balcony in modest numbers, so that I come to recognize individual birds and their personalities.  The colorful visitors seem almost as much family as my own bright parrot companions, perched by the window just a few feet from the outdoor birds.

I do what I often do when faced with a grey day or a grey state of mind – I gather my cup of tea and a few dogs, kick the fluffy cat off my chair, and sit by the window with the birds. I draw towards me the paper, the treasured pigments and paints, and fill my life with color. Red and purple, gold and silver, green and blue. Even a simple doodle in my journal is a meditative process, another form of prayer, and brings me a feeling of peace and fulfillment. 

This little cardinal painting illustrated one of my journal pages. The bird with his heart-shaped wings reminds me of the other bright spot that graces a grim February – the exchange of Valentines.  Do they still do that in elementary school? Fill out a Valentine for each of your classmates, and place it in the folder with their name? It’s a fond memory, your Mom taking you to the drugstore to buy a box of valentine cards, that anticipation when someone is opening your message to them, and to see their words to you scrawled in crayon. Later, I was used to receiving flowers with a little poem, and I thought I needed that, so the first year or two after my divorce, I sent myself flowers, and wrote a little poem to myself. I lost interest in this when I remembered that the real charm of Valentine’s day is telling others that they are loved.

  When my son was growing up, I sometimes used to make Valentines for him.  Silly hand made cards with hearts, but a message that went beyond “be my Valentine” – a love letter of sorts.  The sort of love letter that describes how special and wonderful you think the person is.  Everyone needs to hear that someone wishes them well, recognizes their beauty, values them, considers them love-able. What a great thing – a desire to make something beautiful – to let them know.

In this year of isolation and uncertainty, I have this simple Valentine to write upon my heart to my son, to my extended family, and to those people who are that most varied of loves: friends. This is my message to you.

Dear Valentine of mine:

I wish you warmth in the wintertime.

I hope you see a red bird on a grey day.

I wish you the joy that rises like the morning light.

I hope you find kindness – especially the compassion you can show yourself.

I hope you give yourself permission to do the things that you love.

I hope you decide what life you want to live, and be that.

I hope you forget about the limits you placed on yourself in the past.

I wish for you the simple faith of our childhood – not the judgmental religion we see in the media, but the certainty in our heart that we are cherished.

We are not alone.

There is hope.

And I’d like to think that you would get out your brightest crayons and write a message to me on your heart, too,

January 2021

Betty Dalke Wathne

January is a time of reflection and of resolutions. I was speaking to a friend about Transformation and the nature of change.  We wondered how it could happen, when all previous attempts were failures? What makes this decision the genuine one? I don’t understand how it works, this miracle of transformation. There certainly are elements of determination and of motivation, but I think it may simply be the refusal to continue to dwell in the depths. Some months ago, I decided to make the most of the Covid time. I resolved to change, and not knowing how to do that,  I just started living like the person I wanted to be. Making the choices and holding the priorities that mythical-yet-possibly-achievable woman would. Investing my time, thoughts, and energies in a different way than always before.  And the old me, the one that was holding me back, dissolved. I was able to let go of that horrible companion, my crippling depression. Leaving her behind, I felt no regrets and no nostalgia.  Just the sensation of emerging from deep water as my true self.

The Mermaid

B.Wathne

She emerged from the storm-wrack this morning. Her scales fell away.

The wet sand, too yielding, slipped away beneath her feet. But when she trusted it, it supported her, and she stood.

The air against her skin blew harsh, sharper than any current, and the sun dried the tendrils that had dragged at her head for so long. They lifted and drifted, now across her face so that she could not see, now settling in a cloak, hiding her form but revealing everything else.

Delicious new muscles sang, and she wanted to attend that delicate tune, but it was drowned by the tympani of wave and wind.  Incessant, beating – how to endure its rampant insistence? Become deaf again? Float silently once more in her seaweed forest? Drift apart in her lonesome way, without all this bustling buffeting?

For a time she faced her old dwelling place and felt the draw of its dark embrace. 

Then she gulped a deep, deep swallow of air.

Oh, and it burned, that breath.

It tasted of the salt of night-time tears and the uncaring ocean.

It tasted of the spices of hope and promise.

It heated her throat with a thousand I cannots and a thousand and one I wills.

She grasped her last I will, turned on newfound limbs, and strode into the dunes.

This shortest day, as promise wakens in the sleeping land

From The Shortest Day, by Susan Cooper

Betty Dalke Wathne
December 2020

Freezing rain and sleet tinkled against the day’s accumulation of ice. It was the winter solstice, the longest night of the year.  The ground was roughly rutted, a little frozen on top but with deep sucking mud underneath, and the footing was tricky.  I wanted to look up to see the Bethlehem Star – the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. I wanted to get Spider into his stall where soft shavings, a fresh bucket of water, and a meal awaited him.  But I also really wanted to see those converged planets, forming the appearance of one large star, the Christmas Star.  Perhaps it would make Christmas seem more real in a year when loved ones are hurting, are far away, are ill, and we are all separated for safety. 

Spider was eager to get inside, shivering a little under his ice-spangled blanket, his thick winter coat standing in wet peaks, looking forward to his hay and bite of grain. There could be grated carrots or a slice of apple, too. That’s something a horse can really look forward to.  He wanted to rush to the stable and its comfort. But he is attuned to my movement, and when I stopped to look up, he stopped too. I had spent a lot of time over the years training him to lead perfectly – moving forward, speeding up, slowing down, stopping, backing – just in response to the way I moved, and he never pulled ahead.  But last winter I could not walk him in from the barn.  My knee was bad, my balance was bad, I had a chronic achilles injury, and I could not handle the ruts, the mud, the ice, or any of it, really. So I held on to my horse.  His four sound legs were steadier than my two damaged legs.  And my old gelding, who had learned for decades to never walk ahead, now learned to walk with me aligned by his shoulder, one hand on him for support.  He learned to take small, careful strides, making sure I was right next to him and secure in my balance before each new step.

On this longest night, even though this year I could easily navigate rutted, muddy, slick ground in the dark, with my new knee and healed ankle and stronger legs, I still walked next to his shoulder, one hand under his mane on that warm freckled neck. It had become our habit – symbolic mutual comfort and support. Sometimes we just walk that way now. He felt me stop to look up, at the Christmas star, the waxing moon, the deep blue sky with bright drifting clouds. And he waited for me. He flung his head up and gazed upwards as well.

The two of us were quiet in the tinkling night.  I pondered the winter sky, the change in my ability to walk this year, Christmas week arriving, my intentions of being alone on the holiday, loved ones near and far.  I don’t know what Spider was pondering. I could hear him breathe. He could hear me breathe. We didn’t need to share thoughts to know that we were together, there for each other.

Lipizzans traditionally have one rider for their entire lives.  Over the centuries of careful breeding, they have, perhaps more than other horse breeds, developed the ability to bond closely with one person.  Their breeding has been so carefully aligned with classical correctness rather than show ring fashions, that they are famous and well-respected despite being old-fashioned. The Lipizzan does not have abundant flowing hair or extravagant movement as in fancier breeds. But there is a classical beauty to their short stature, round barrel, and arched neck, resembling a warhorse carved on a Greek frieze. Spider has descended from this royal lineage. He is an elegant warhorse in his own way, an everyday sort of hero. He is Maestoso Melora, and his super power is loyal devotion.

So Spider stood in all his noble serenity and power under my hand, and the two of us were part of that illuminated night together.  Then I thought about continuing on, and he felt my intention, and we moved on into the barn. It was the Winter Solstice, the longest night, and the days were going to get longer.