A breath of air

My mother was just a naturally hot person - for as long as I can remember. The stages of life ebbed and flowed but the flashes of heat did not flag. And one of her ways of coping was to step out on our front porch - which curled around the side and front of the house - and get a breath of fresh air, no matter what time of the year it was.

I find myself doing the same thing. I step out on my front stoop.

Her view took in fields that stretched far to the horizon, as well as scattered neighbors' houses on the periphery.

My view takes in a suburban cluster of houses with tall trees.

Neighbors for her were all of one skin color, economics, religion.

Neighbors for me run the gamut on all counts.

She saw sunsets and blue sky.

I see rainbows of diversity.

But she passed along her peaceful heart which makes all the difference.

I do

I was just dusting off the framed marriage certificate of my parents this morning. The frame is cracked and crumbling at parts and the lettering is fading away into eternity. But it bears witness of a beautiful beginning.

Just a parlor gathering, with a few close friends, family and the bishop was all that it took to set, eventually me, in action. From Mother's notes they went back to her home for a big meal and that was it!

The average wedding today now checks in at $28,000.

That was 1935 and, yes, everything has inflated drastically since then. Still.

The inscription at the bottom of the certificate is "And Boaz took Ruth and she was his wife."

And Abram took Mabel and she was his wife.

And the marriage lovingly lasted 'til death parted them. Amen.

On a shoestring.

The Pope and Donald Trump.

Just when you thought the political season could not get anymore absurd along comes yesterday.

I don't think it's just age but I find the present scene - well, akin to the Gladiator sport in Roman times. Apparently the public cheers for blood - and incivility - and conflict. If you have a political gathering that merely discusses issues - how blah! No sound bites. But let one adult male call the other a liar - well, that's news! And top off that delectable sundae with a cherry that contains one of the highest religious authority's questioning one of the combatant's faith and you've got a party! I just wonder how low we can go - it's the political limbo dance of all times!

I hark back to the sweet innocence of the farm boys (ultra-conservative) at Hinkletown school chanting,
 
"Ike is in the White House
Ready to be re-elected
Stevenson's in the garbage can
Ready to be collected!"

 And I don't think the Vatican got into the mix.

In this together

I've thought a lot about generations lately. I look at the lives of my sons and realize how different they are from ours. The places they live, the things they hear, see, experience, delight in. They would be astonished at the simple parameters of our early lives.

And I think back on my parents' lives and don't think they were that dissimilar from my grandparents lives. While the differences from this perspective don't seem that dramatic, perhaps they seemed just as dramatic to our grandparents.

It just seems that the world is changing in leaps and bounds, not inch by inch. Our boys marvel that they remember black and white TV. We marvel that we remember only radio. Our parents would remember days of first cars!

Progress, yes, but I hope somehow we can preserve the structure of community that came with a simpler way of life.

Whose woods are these?

I just returned from a two mile hike around the lake in the snow - how gorgeous! It's always amazing to me how falling snow transforms life. Normally on my walk I would encounter lots of other walkers, dogs, runners, workmen, etc. Today, I met two people total. Other than that it was a white swirling world of silence.

 A world handed just to me.

 A Robert Frost moment on foot!

review of "the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry"

Queenie is dying in Berwick-upon-Tweed and Harold is walking five hundred miles from Southern England to keep her alive. The idea came to him over a burger at a garage where the girl attendant shared her story of an aunt with cancer whom she helped by having faith in her healing and vowed that we have to" believe in what we don't know."  A light dawns in Harold's darkness.


Now he is walking for Queenie . And for his own salvation.

He is walking in yachting shoes, with no cell phone, no maps, but a world of heart. And hurt.

He and Queenie were work colleagues. One night, in an anguished moment, Harold committed a destructive act and Queenie took the blame. She was fired and disappeared from the scene. Now after many years he receives a letter from her telling him of her approaching demise. He immediately pens a sparse letter of response and sets out to mail it to her. But instead of slipping it into the finality of the postal slot, he decides to deliver it in person. What follows is an account of his pilgrimage.

 

In the holiness of the birds, trees, flowers, barns, evening "squares of buttered light from windows, he finds internal solace and begins to remove the fragments of his life from his mind. With initial hesitant caution and then increasing openness he examines each momentous turn of events involving his childhood, marriage, son, job and selfhood. He discovers the people he meets surprisingly

have their own burdens, but they share joyously in his quest to save Queenie.

Month after month the journey wavers and surges as Harold puts one foot in front of the other through exaltation and deep sorrow. In his painful reverie, he begins to revisit his relationship with his left-behind spouse, Maureen, and their troubled son, David, and how his death poisoned the thinning marriage and  shut out the light - the ripples of his suicide flowing out into the darkest corners of their blaming.

But there is counterbalancing joy! The kindness of strangers provides him with plasters for his blistered feet and hope for his soul, buffering his sorrow. Like a magnet he attracts bizarre fellow-travelers with their own agendas, the media, the disillusioned in search of truth, and yes, even a
dog accompanies him for awhile.

Meanwhile back at home, Maureen with the help of a grieving neighbor slowly is also able to pull back the curtains of her life - literally- and remember a time when she and Harold laughed and loved.

But all pilgrimages must come to an end and the triangle lives of Maureen, Harold and Queenie culminate on the banks of Berwick-on Tweed in a baptism of tears.

As Hemingway once said, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places."

That is our prayer for Harold and Maureen. And for ourselves.

 

 

phonecall

February 9 marks my life as before and after.

On that momentous date 34 years ago, my beloved father, after shoveling a driveway full of  wet snow, came indoors, sat down on his favorite chair, and died.

He was scarcely sick a day of his life. He was my gentle rock.

When you get a long-distance call that your father has died, the words hit your ear, dance dizzily in your mind and try to gain purchase on any familiar ground. There is none.

That long-accepted framework of trust, guidance, love, understanding, acceptance, safety - was gone in one second of time. I will never be the same person.

It was the first towering granite boulder in my pathway that I couldn't get around, over, under - I just had to dig through it.

And yes, I got to the other side. And there is still joy, laughter, sunshine, springtime, love in all shades.

But now there is an edge of understanding that all that is cherished is on loan and must be savored.

Because the phone can ring again. At any time. And digging through boulders is such hard work.

Mighty Casey

You've shoveled the snow....endlessly....

You've stepped with mincing, pathetic slowness over the black ice...

You've endured scarfs over your nose and ears, and frozen fingers and toes...

You've slid into cold car seats...

You see mostly grays and browns when you look outside...

So, doesn't your heart leap to hear the words,

SPRING TRAINING BEGINS FEBRUARY 19!!!

Suddenly you can smell grass and popcorn and feel the sun on your face, and feel the ecstasy of the crowds, the players, the mascots.

Summer's song.

Sure, it's can be boring, frustrating, agonizing, slow.

But it's long days under blue skies. It's hope that this is our year. It's a melding of a community. It's a passion that spreads over the warming months.

More than that, it's a pastime. Something to talk about. Something to frame your days. Something to argue, rejoice, scorn, revere, exult, disparage, dream about.

So take a deep breath and hold it for the next few weeks and soon, very soon, you will hear that  ageless edict , "Play ball!"

Let the peaceful mayhem of baseball begin.

Lowly words

My sister unearthed one of her school composition books from 1947! Enclosed was a note from my mother to the teacher. The note was probably hastily penned, telling the teacher what a help my sister was with my brother and I and how we looked forward to the end of the week when she would play with us and read to us.

And there it was. I was four and looking forward to being read to. The beginnings of a life-long love affair.

The romance of words can begin early. For a developing child to hear the sparkling stream of words flowing over him endlessly is really one of the treasures that is freely available to all. But I mourn that lack of focus today. Now it's much rarer that those words aren't accompanied by moving images of the most sophisticated kind, overshadowing the distinction of language. Whereas, God bless my sister, mother, teacher who read and read to me stories, poems, nursery rhymes - words danced through all my days and took strong root in the fertile soil of my imagination. I filled in the blanks.