radio days

"Henreeeeeeeeeeee! ! Henry Aldrich!"
"Coming, Mother!"

And with those words ringing through my ears, I am back home in the front room in Hinkletown! I looked up the date of the show's radio premiere and it was 1949! Though I was just small and I couldn't tell you a single plot of the show, I do remember vividly all the laughs and warm feelings it produced in my family. And how quaint to think of a family gathered in one room to listen to a show! The concept of family gatherings in one room is rare enough today, but just to listen and let minds fill in the details and keep eyes and fingers idle is beyond foreign these days!

Yes, we say, life was simpler then. But, seriously, didn't our minds have to work harder to create and flesh out the scenes we were hearing? Sometimes I think those days are looked down upon when actually they were in many ways far more inventive and creative because we had to fill in so many blanks on our own. And in that family gathering, most certainly every person had a different image in his head about what actually was happening. Whereas, with TV and DVDs everyone is being spoon-fed the images with little room for invention or interpretation.

Of course I wouldn't want to go back entirely to the world of radio, but I must say I am turning to it more and more as the multi-media technological bombardment can be quite exhausting!

little shop of kindness

There is a wonderful classic movie called "Little Shop Around the Corner" starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan. Many remakes of it have been attempted and I wish everyone would just be content to let this little gem sparkle on its own down through the decades. Stewart and Sullivan are obviously the bones of the movie, but an absolutely stellar cast fills in the spaces. The setting is Christmas in Budapest in the 1940's. At the end, the elderly shop-owner whose marriage has just crumbled is alone on Christmas Eve and describes a dinner of roast goose to a hungry young apprentice while the snow is falling all around. The simple anticipated bond of a shared dinner on a lonely night shines anew each time I watch it.

In this season of sickening buying, returning, exchanging, re-gifting, and general discontent about what was given, what was spent, what was flaunted, I wander back to the streets of Budapest and find that a simple act of kindness makes my season bright indeed.

Kleiny's hill

"Can we go sledding?"

Wow, I still feel the excitement of that question 60 + years later! For us, it definitely meant parental permission because we had to tug said sleds along a two-lane highway - now that I think of it, a trek made all the more dangerous because of icy, snowy roads - to Kleiny's hill down near the creek. 

It wasn't a particularly long hill, more short and steep, made especially treacherous if you began just a bit higher so that you hit a bump between two trees. The little kids, i.e. me, were supposed to begin below the bump and avoid the tree syndrome, but we all know the reality of that! I truly don't remember any major accidents but real scares once or twice.

The thing is, we were padded to the hilt! Puffy snow-pants with suspenders, jackets, caps, mittens (can you still taste the wadded snow that had to be eaten off them!?!), scarves wound around rosy cheeks that immediately became wet with cold breaths and boots that buckled or pulled on. Mere movement was a chore! - injury not much of a reality!

But still, flying downhill through the gray, snowy afternoons, flakes biting into your cheeks, half of your clothing soggy, on that sled, either on your tummy, guiding with your hands or sitting and guiding with your feet.....power, speed, freedom, ecstasy!

Now, every single aspect of it would give me pause.

But I am not old!

Apples of gold

In my annual Christmas gathering with my book club I asked them the question that was posed by an author recently - "What book changed your life or at least had great influence on your life enough to go back and re-read frequently?"

For a reader that's a toughie! But it was fascinating to hear the choices. Some chose books from their childhoods, other's young adult and still others present-day. And amazingly, for the childhood picks, over and over they said Nancy Drew! How many children first caught the reading passion through Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys! That first magic carpet ride that lifted you above the treetops into a world of mystery and intrigue, giving you a friend beyond your daily life. That bond is repeated over and over by the best selling authors of today. They introduce you to a likable protagonist and you feel like you are shaking hands with an old friend each time you open a book in the series.

I pondered my response to the question and last week suddenly settled on the King James Bible. I must hasten to say in this context, not because of the religious part, but because the magnificent literature, the cadence of the archaic language, the exquisite imagery and yes, the stories, the stories, the stories. I feel as though all these things are layered and layered within me because of my early childhood exposure. Joyce Maynard once said that her parents raised her without any religious tenets and at first she was grateful and now resentful because her ignorance of the Bible is such a handicap in literature and art. Biblical references are everywhere!

And I feel as a writer I have benefited from that early Biblical steeping - as my mother used to love to quote from Proverbs, " A word fitly spoke is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." 

Words to savor.

cometh the clipper

"The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He'll sit in the barn and keep himself warm
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing!"

How often these learned childhood verses line my thoughts and/or speech! I think I remember the nursery rhymes in particular, but also all the songs and poems we learned at school or as I have so often said, at Mother's elbow as she was working away in the kitchen. I think I will start keeping track of the frequency! 

But looking out on the grey skies whipping the few remaining leaves from the bare trees, I feel as though I need a warm wing for tucking under as well!

one day wonder

Much as I love the concept of snowstorms moving in and completely cloaking the world with stillness for a brief day, perhaps I love even more the brilliant sunshine the next day unraveling all the chaos! How nice to see dry roads and see that last patch of ice sliding away and our steps unchallenged. That's here in Virginia, but I remember the early days of both upstate New York and Newfoundland, when that first snowfall came to town, life had an icy edge underfoot until Spring! At this stage in my life I love puddles in winter!

Praise

John Updike was once asked "Why are we here?" And he answered, "We are here to give praise."

I love that answer. Praise. It's always a smiling word.

Praise to a child for a task well-done. Praise to a spouse for a thoughtful gesture. Praise to a neighbor for a blooming garden. Praise to a colleague for the deft handling of a situation. Praise to yourself. 

We crave it. It melts like butter in your soul, warmly enriching the day.

We hear so often, praise to God. 

Yes, but praise to all creatures here below as well.

Praise. Talk about the perfect present under the tree.

in the morning light

Stillness.

We crave it. Especially now.

Despite efforts to minimize, minimize, minimize over the holidays, it just seems gatherings, meeting with friends, little token gifts, food to prepare for this event or that - not big parties! - mount up and the season gathers manic moss.

I'm not hoisting the white flag. But that morning walk with the rising sun has more and more nerves to un-jangle and smooth into stillness.

assets

I write quotations on the white board of the staff entrance at the library and yesterday I wrote "My friends are my estate" - Emily Dickinson.

I smile at that sentiment every time I think of it.

Because, in truth,all other assets pale in the strong light of friendship. And there are myriads of kinds. I have childhood friends, (whom I may seldom see), college friends, current friends, family friends, in my case patron friends - brick by brick they all add dimension to my life. And when I move on to the next level of existence, if my friends would remember the good times we shared, that would exceed any measure of earthly gain.

Friends. They are the yeast, the answers, the questions, the frustrations, the joys, the laughter - the rainbows that make any storm worthwhile.

towering above

I was listening to an account of a young man who was studying to be a doctor. It was in the middle of the night when I awoke and happened on to the show,  missing the context. All I know was that he was homeless and often rode the bus all night just to stay warm. Or slept in a fellow student's van. Or, whatever. All the while he kept going to classes and his vision stayed strong.

I spent the next long time trying to think what I would be without a home. What? I can almost guarantee I wouldn't be studying for a rigorous degree of some kind. I don't have that kind of ambition despite being cosseted by advantage.

Not having the simplest nest to go to at night and arise from in the morning is inconceivable. I need a staying point - I think everyone does. The difference is his is within his flesh and bones rather than brick and mortar.

Talk about superheroes.

The morning after

And with the early rising of today's sun, I could not stay in bed, despite having this day off as well. I had to feel that bracing November air on my face and swallow some sunshine to help digest the indulgences of yesterday's feasting! I know each step didn't erase all the bodily excess, but it helped to hone the spirit. What a glorious spate of weather we have been given here in this last burst of fall. On the coming days when cars are spinning off the roads and the snow is swirling we will look back with longing! For now, soak up the rays before the north wind blows!

Happy Thanksgiving

Since I am not cooking the turkey this year, I was free to walk on this glorious afternoon. The crisp temps and sunny blue skies made the day itself a gift. I stopped at the far end of the lake and basked in the brilliance for a bit, ticking off my blessings mentally. It went on for quite a while! Rising high on the list was health. And I wondered if that were taken away, would my inner peace dissolve as well? Is health the kingpin? I hope not, but I see/read/hear so many stories of destroyed wellness where folks just rise above it all with shining, if weathered faces. That is the true Thanksgiving - when you find the rainbow despite the storm. I pray I don't have to put my gratitude to test! But meanwhile, I so fervently give thanks.

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings

One Thanksgiving in the late 40’s, we headed over to my cousin’s home for Thanksgiving dinner. It began to snow heavily as we started out and my cousin lived on a farm that was down a long lane which began to drift into snowbanks almost immediately. But food and family lay ahead and apparently my father never gave driving another thought! When we entered the old brick farmhouse, the dining room was completely swallowed up with a long, long table that fairly groaned with the lavishly decadent cuisine of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture. The aromas hit the empty stomachs with a visceral punch! I’m sure there was some combination of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, peas, red-beet-eggs, pickles, potato salad, olives, chow-chow, gravy, bread, jam – and my memory’s probably skipping over lots of things! And for dessert, there was a staggering array of cakes, puddings crowned with whipped cream, pies, cookies and of course, ice cream for those who needed a calories boost to any of the afore-mentioned! It is indeed awesome to consider the amount of physical labor that occurred around the preparation of that feast and the cleaning-up afterward! No dish-washers for that crowd, just dishpan after dishpan of soapy water and many, many soggy tea-towels – all punctuated by gossip, laughter and overflowing good will.

I reflect that possibly we were the last of my extended family to experience the enveloping embrace of larger family events as everyone now is far-flung. The world had exploded. And while I’m sure there are still families who maintain the traditions of generations, my sons will never go over the river and through the woods, through snow-banks and farmland to a crowded steamy house of family giving thanks. We celebrate in new ways.

But the memory of that burst from the snowy cold into a  Thanksgiving kitchen filled with food and family will shine forever.

sneak peek at the feast

Since I knew I wasn't going to be cooking the Thanksgiving meal this year as we are invited to the neighbors' house for said feast, I blitzed the holiday last evening. For the first time ever I bought a package of three turkey legs to roast! I put a bed of chopped veggies, garlic, broth and butter and baked and basted those beauties to browned perfection in very little time. I added two of my favorite sides, mashed rutabagas and keckling - a nutty, soy bean dish from my childhood. And of course, cranberry sauce.

I was in heaven - and it took so little luggage to get there! The aromas swept through the house and my soul, delighting me with each intake of breath.

What a secret to discover in my advancing years! I think I will have to stock the freezer with this easy access to turkey nirvana! All the joys and minimal sweaty brows, greasy pans, carving, thermometer anxiety, and leftovers beyond the scope of two adults - one of whom doesn't care for turkey in any form!

Life can be so simple if pursued properly!

From the past

Yesterday my book club discussed Alice McDermott's Someone. The story takes place in Brooklyn beginning in the 1920's. I am not Catholic, Irish, or really familiar with Brooklyn, but I was home from the first page. Her unerring understanding of the human heart is breathtaking, but so is her attention to detail.

Two details transported me back to my childhood with such a rush it was astonishing. She talked about the girls sitting on the stoop gossipping, pulling their skirts down over their bent knees and tucking them modestly in place!

And the second detail was that she crawled up into her father's lap behind the newspaper he was reading - and that hit me like a sledgehammer because, probably for the first time in a half of century  I remembered vividly doing the same thing to my father in the front room of our house in Hinkletown. And could there have been a greater haven for a little child?! I felt his heartbeat and was surrounded by newsprint and love!

Lima beans

Today I am thinking of lima beans!

And, well you might say, go to Harris Teeter and buy a bag, but alas, they have nothing that even resembles the food I'm fantasizing about. I keep buying frozen bags of Fordhook lima beans or baby lima beans, hope springing eternal in my veins not to mention salivary glands. But though I steam, boil, add butter and even a bit of sugar, the objects on my plate bear no kinship to my memories.

Mother picked lima beans from the garden behind our house by the swings. And she picked them young. And she cooked them briefly, adding butter, salt, pepper and a bit of rich milk. Then you ate them. The squish of flavor as you mouthed these tender morsels was incredible. I long for it!

In my current world, the closest thing that comes to matching the flavor is young edamame - quite the chic item as you squeeze them out of their salted shells in glitzy bars with a tasty cocktail in hand.

But I'd trade that any day for a plate of Mother's lima beans served on a snowy white Sunday dinner table with a family of seven divvying them out amid the clamor!

Books await

When the library morphs into a polling place the whole aura changes.

Even though the voting room is down the hall, library neophytes wander into the main library as well, blinking in surprise at ----everything! It’s always amazing to me how for a sizeable percentage of the voters this is their first venture into the belly of the books! I can always tell the newbies. This morning at bright-eyed boy asked me where the history books were. “History of what,” I asked. “Let's say Antarctica!” And immediately I surmised he was really interested in the Shackleton expedition – he was a boy, after all! (Yes, I know, judgmental!) But boys who don’t really read always want something spectacular or grisly or scary. Like monsters. Or dragons. Or shipwrecks. Or racecars. The newbie girls will ask for Disney characters and princesses in general. The don’t ask for authors, or titles, or series; their interest lie largely in finding a book that will supplement TV or movies interests. I am always saddened, because there is such a wealth of reading for every age that would help fill out the edges, gaps, nooks and crannies of growing up.

Hurray for Election Day – but come back on a more regular basis too and get to know us!

this little light

We sang in Sunday School, "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine".... and though it had religious connotation then, it has new meaning to me in November 2017. 

Each day brings new horror, it seems to me, whether it's political, cultural, religious in nature. And it feels as though one's feet are constantly becoming stuck in the mire and, some days, forward progress seems slim.

Yet yesterday when one sad patron was pouring out his grief about the times to me, I said spontaneously, "you have to seek middle ground - you can't really exist on the rarefied, bitter air of the far right or left. Seek the middle."

At the end he said, "I might actually survive if I get in here to talk to you every now and again."

Such a few words, but that little light can shine in very dark hours indeed.

remembering

New Orleans had a "second line" for Fats Domino yesterday. How I would have loved to be in that throng of dancing, singing, ordinary folks who loved his infectious music!

And what a concept -to dance instead weep!

I think gradually our commemorations of death are becoming more radiant. The gloom, tears, black clothing, veils, solemn sermons of the past are hopefully getting replaced with whatever sunshine the deceased brought into this world. 

For me, the time to weep is alone.

corn shock

Yesterday I remarked to a group of colleagues at lunch when we were discussing Halloween - "Did any of you ever throw corn?" Honestly, they looked at me as if I had two heads! And I immediately knew I was country!

Before this hallowed eve, as children we would raid the neighbor's corn shocks, grab an ear or two of corn and laboriously finger-strip those hard, shining yellow/red/purple kernels of corn into a pail with a handle, which we would carry with us in our nighttime escapades. Mind you, our escapades were quite contained! We lived along a busy two-lane highway, the houses were not side by side and there were no sidewalks. Our range of motion was limited. But that noisy spatter of corn against windows and doors was quite scary - especially to us!!

How could your childhood have been successful without it?!

You know, each morning as I clamber out of bed and stretch to the skies, I try to give thanks. But then as the day progresses, the petty irritations and time pressures melt down and coat my higher self and I forget the miracles that sprout on every hand. I came across the lyrics of an old album from the 70's that contained the song Ten Lepers - from the Biblical parable. Ten were healed and only one returned to give thanks. The last paragraph is:

"Thank you Lord, for the summer sun,
For sight and song and good deeds done,
Faith and family and loving friends,
For the day that begins and the night that ends."

Simple. But the world.

My Dove Chocolate wrapper's message to me yesterday was "Quote your dad." Hmmm.

Dad was a gentle, quiet man of few words. And that was the beauty of it, he lived his messages. I do remember his prayers always contained the words, "Lead, guide and direct us..."

And amid all the clamor of a life with a family of seven, he listened to that inner core of Wisdom, balancing him and us.

His words linger.

draining the swamp

Time magazine apparently features an lead article this month about how the current administration is systematically smashing our government checks and balances and bragging about de-regulation.

Once again, industries are free to spew poisons into our air, rivers, streams, oceans. For what? Money. Oh and they always piously add, jobs. May I ask, what good are jobs if you can't breathe and your children are dying of new cancers?

Or in education, in the area of sexual abuse, they are weakening the ability to prosecute.

Or in special needs, they are slicing into those benefits,
as in Medicare,
as in veterans care,
as in Meals on Wheels, 
And the list trails on endlessly.

It will be a very different world if the country doesn't awake to this new agenda. The people in the red hats may discover there are many different definitions of "great".

Little Red School House

The past few days I’ve been thinking of my two-room grade school and it's teachers. And marveling.

Their pay had to be meager and their tasks Herculean. Their job included banking the coal stove at night and keeping it going during the day, sweeping the oiled floors, emptying the wastepaper baskets, clapping the erasers, washing the blackboards,  - and that’s just the bare-boned maintenance of the building. In addition they needed reasonable four-grade mastery of at least five subjects – spelling, reading, arithmetic, history, geography and an occasional art class thrown in. They needed to be able to sing and it helped to be able to play the rickety out-of-tune piano for opening rituals each day. Bathrooms were privies way far beyond the school at the back of the playground. Water was carried from a neighbor’s pump  to a blue and beige striped cooler resting at the back of the classroom near the hooks for outdoor clothing. But beyond all these basics, they had to keep order with a bunch of overgrown, sweaty, boisterous farm boys on the make! Our teacher in the upper grades had a leather strap that she often carried with her and used with alacrity on offending hands.  She must have had school board muscle behind her and in those days, authoritative bodies still had the respect of the community so no one in my eight years ever got too far out of line.

But all of the above aside, what I am most grateful to my “upper” grades teacher is her understanding that one of the most priceless gifts she could give us, was the time she set aside for reading aloud to us – mind you, we may have gotten short-changed academically, but our literary imaginations were generously stoked. The books I can remember are the entire Little House series – from Little House in the Big Woods to these Happy Golden Years ; White Fang and Call of the Wild; The Moffats; The White Stag, The Singing Tree and the Good Master – and these are only ones I can remember!

School ran from just after Labor Day until early May – to get the farm children back home to help with the spring crops.

I have to think, our teachers had some crops of their own to tend to by that time!

put another nickel in

 Two sibs in their 70’s are out to dinner with their spouses and the one says, “I woke up singing ‘There was her mother, her father, her sister and her brother'….” And the other sib spontaneously joins in the singing to the end of the verse! And the beauty of it being that it was an illicit song (I Never See My Maggie Alone) we learned at our cousin’s house when we were about 5 and 6 and probably had not heard/sung in the intervening 60+ years! That’s family! That’s a musical hug! 

Perhaps our brains are a bit like a nickel-fed jukebox arm that goes back and forth searching through the records until it finds the right "tune" memory and begins to play. How nice when two jukeboxes are working in unison!

In this tumultuous world we currently live in where civility seems to be non-existent and grudges must be nursed into full-blown incidents I had to think back to our Hinkletown kitchen. Whenever I would come home from school with some new injustice or slight, and pour it all out to Mother, most likely when she was at the ironing board, or cooking, or cleaning – she would say, “And what did you do? Or say?”

What?! I was the injured party! Why was that an appropriate question?! And if it was a teacher issue, she would always take her part – “she has so many students to look after, it must be hard for her” or”maybe she misunderstood because she’s usually fair.” On and on the speculation about her view went on. It was very annoying.

And, in retrospect, enlightening. 

I think Donald Trump would have benefited with some after-school time in Mother’s kitchen.

across the miles

I just couldn't believe the color of her skin as she sat across the desk from me, speaking softly about books for her daughter. African of origin, her pigment was so richly dark, words failed me...mahogany, aborigine, ebony - nothing was adequate. I felt my own completely unremarkable wash of whiteness! But color aside, we were talking books. We started with the Little House series and got the first four of them lined up on reserve. Then she spoke of Anne of Green Gables and the Boxcar Children - all old-fashioned classics. "That's what I want my girl to read and love", she said. And I remembered my introduction to the Laura Wilder series... in a rural two-roomed schoolhouse, listening to Mrs.Martin read each one - taking Laura from birth to marriage - and being completely entranced. Suddenly miles, origin, language melted away and  we were home by the fireside smiling knowingly over books.

Expect nothing

Alice Walker is quoted as having said, "Expect nothing; live frugally on surprise."

I love that.

I fail at that daily! I think it is part of my make-up to expect happiness and for an embarrassingly large part of my life, that's just what I have been given. But in this current political state, I think I have to start parsing out those meager surprises with Scrooge-like containment to get me through this presidency!

a storied life

At the end of my book club's lively discussion of The Storied Life of A,J, Fikry, I asked them a question that the author was asked in an interview: What three books have shaped your life? I broadened the question to influence rather than shaped and from different times in your life. That's a toughie for any reader! If you read a lot, it's a harrowing question - but intriguing.

One of the group offered almost immediately, Margaret Wise Brown's Color Kittens, citing that she thinks she was about three and the idea of mixing colors sparked to mixing all kinds of materials and coming up new -leading to a lifetime of creativity. I responded from her answer citing a book of poetry my mother first quoted to me and I later read for myself. I don't even know the title of the book because that's long gone from the raggedy book! Ginger something, I think. But that spawned my memories of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses the contents of which are permanently in my heart forever. And I would add Anne of Green Gables and Understood Betsy to that honored list. These books assured me that at its heart, the world is shining despite struggles along the way. 

It gets harder as I contemplate young adult years but thanks to my childhood context of limited resources the gems really stood out as I wandered into high school reading. And those books were classics - I knew nothing of young adult literature, nothing about dragons, vampires, dystopia, aliens, etc. My loves were built on the solid soil of reality - with a dash of romance thrown in always! Jane Eyre found her way into my heart early - as did Rebecca (Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again....) These are books I read over and over again, suffused with pleasure at each reading. But I can't say they influenced my life, exactly. 

So I'm still thinking and picking up samples to nibble on....and oh what a banquet from which to choose!

we all scream for....

My patron was an older man ( I learned later as we were on the computer that his birthday was 1935), and he was searching for an old book which we of course didn't have in our public library collection. I explained the Interlibrary Loan system to him and he listened carefully and then attempted to do it on his own at one of our Internet stations. 82, frail, hesitant, but determined as rock. His cane dropped out of his hand en route to my desk and another patron asked if she could pick it up for him and he uttered a decisive "No!" and proceeded to bend over bit by patient bit to retrieve it. It took a long while but my internal hands were clapping when the mission was accomplished!

Later he stopped in at my desk on his way out, saying he thinks that he successfully completed the ILL form and would see what happens. He said he knew it was at the Library of Congress - and I said, " Let's wait until we see if ILL can find it for you before you make that trip." To which he replied with a great deal of force, "Oh my yes, I'm not going all the way down there even if they got ice cream."  !!!

One day, that may have been a draw; these days that's a pretty funny pot of gold!

camphor ointment

In all my childhood days, resting in the drawer of a little side table beside my mother's bed was a round tin, decorated in blue, white and gold flowers, with the inscribed words, "Rawleigh Medicated Ointment, Famous Old Fashioned Formula. For Cold Discomfort, Congestion, and Nasal Irritation.'' And everything else that ailed you! There was scarcely a bodily scrape that didn't improve with a dab of "Camphor Ointment" as we used to call it. There has never been a time that I haven't had a tin tucked into my belongings somewhere - 70+ years later!

Number one - it is soothing - to all kinds of inflammations. But more importantly, its application always feels like a little bit of Mother. It was her go-to solutions for so many of life's rough spots.

So,now in the midst of  21st Century woes, I rub on a bit of Rawleigh's magic and still feel the cool comfort of her love.

vive la difference!

Family reunions are a quirky business.

Even if you like your relatives, there is always a Squibs mixture of excitement, dread, guilt, pleasure threading through the planned visit. And no matter how successful they are, for people of an age or socially reluctant disposition, constant conversation and relating to people is hard work! And, yes, one can go off on one's own to read, hike, meditate - but then there is the nagging thought that one can do that at home without the cost and effort of a gathering. Thus the conundrum!

Nevertheless, though I was grateful to get back to the relative quiet of our personal space, I look back on our conjoined family time as golden. New shoots of communication will green and nourish the coming months and years until we gather again.

And somehow the divergent Facebook postings are now viewed with different eyes, because you remember the night under the stars with that cousin that were magical - despite the fact that he probably voted for Trump!

Retrieval

On my morning lake walk, in a park by the path, a young woman was throwing a ball to her dog. The green was splashed with early August sunlight and the dog was ecstasy in motion! As the ball left her hand he shot across the sunlit park into the bushes to retrieve it, completely oblivious to any hazard in his path and streaked back again for round two, three, four as I strode by.

I smiled and gave thanks for color, energy, pets and people, and health. Life is meant to enjoyed and pursued like a tennis ball flying through the green on an early morning.

tucked among the books

Little boy (holding stuffed toy): “I want to take this penguin home with me because I like him.”

Mother: “But this penguin lives here.”

Little boy: “why?”

Mother: “Because he lives on books.”

Wow, do I love that mother! So, do I Mom, so do I!

rinse and repeat

This morning on NPR I heard this intriguing segment on Japanese "forest bathing" - I can just feel the eye rolls! But the concept was that as a people our evolution was supported, urged along, "bathed" by nature and now we are indoors most of the time, tethered to devices and we need to reverse the trend. Irrefutable.

So this morning as I walked my senses were ratcheted to the highest point... and I suddenly saw that these pre-breakfast walks are like weaving a basket to carry my day. The strands are made of robins, bleeding-hearts, chipmunks, blue skies, ferns, steamy soil, bee-balm, pine trees, the lake catching first light, Canadian geese morning ablutions, crows gossiping, breezes in the oaks, black-eyed Susan's, purple petunias, ants, bees, the occasional fox or deer, but arching over all the early coolness. 

My basket will carry the day. 

And I am bathed.

select society

"Could you please help me find a book?"

Those words have thrilled me for 35 years! Whether the person is five or 95 - and yes, I have friends in both categories and all the ages in between. It is my honor, privilege, delight to find a book that when I hand it to the waiting person, the face bursts into a yes!

Readers, we are the most fortunate passengers on this planet. We are never bored - if we have nothing new, we re-read with the pleasure of greeting an old friend.

Two pages and usually I am a goner. If my pulse doesn't quicken in that time, I am far too aware of all the treasures that await and on I go to another option.

But to actually be the link of reader with book is like holding hands in prayer - the power flows along an endless line through generations, time and place in a quiet cacophony of grace.

When

Yesterday in the library an old friend who I know nothing about beyond the information desk came in. I hadn't seen him for a while, but he is a geology professor who retired and almost immediately went back to work as an adjunct because he missed the interaction with the students so keenly. We discussed the similarity of our situations. He said as soon as he doesn't feel that the students are excited about his subject, he will retire for good. I said as soon as the schedule become more oppressive than the joy of one-to-one with my hundreds of patrons, I will also retire. We looked at each other and grinned, knowing we were the luckiest of people to have a choice to say "when" the pouring of our beloved careers has filled our cups completely.

when the rains came

During our last storm, when the direst of predictions scalded the media all day, and the sky was midnight black, only the rain came, in torrents. I was alone in the house and opened the front door amid all the clamor,  just enough to inhale deeply. Standing there breathing in the smell of earth, green plants, wet foliage - the DNA of life, I felt like I could live forever on just that exhilarating scent.

Roll on

The sea
icy, green/blue/creamy
tumbling into
eternity.

Why does it
inspire
cleanse
forgive
strengthen
soothe
comfort?

I remember
my teachers
taking erasers
we had clapped clean
and smoothing away
from the board
every word,
every speck of chalk
and starting a fresh sentence.

Home again,
I begin.

so rare

On this glorious afternoon laced with high blue heavens and greenery as I walked by the benches that line the edge of the lake, the only person in sight was a frail elderly gentleman on the last bench, who saluted me smartly and said, "Good afternoon, my dear, I would stand up but I'm just too damn old!" I sang a cheery "absolutely not, enjoy your day " as I kept on striding through the golden light. Now I wish I had stopped for a chat. How often does one meet gallantry at the edge of a Tuesday afternoon?

Over the rainbow

More music musings!

My husband helped me set up a Spotify account and honestly, I've known about this for years and never acted upon it - why?? Now, at the push of a button I have humming through my ears Leonard Cohen, Mozart, Enya, Statler Brothers, Robert Shaw, Willie Nelson, Brubeck, Kris Kristofferson, Norah Jones, Eva Cassidy.....on to the end to the sea. Every song I've ever adored I pull into my soul and sing, dance, weep.

Much as I sigh about technology's bite out of our lives, this is one aspect that keeps layering beauty upon beauty on my soul.

Maestro!

I made a surprising discovery! Lets hear it for discoveries whenever, wherever they happen and however large or small they may be.

Due to excessive (!) technology in our house, the main rooms have TVs in them and often they are on in the background at some cable channel. And while I'm scarcely ever giving them my full attention as I work, read the paper, play games on-line, there is a background narrative gnawing away at my serenity - at least ever since November 2016! I find 99% of the news and commentary distressing, even subconsciously.

Lately I have been switching the TV off and listening to our classical FM music station. And, slowly, I realized that bit by bit the crystallized beauty of the ages is not only soothing me, but is adding thoughts, memories, ideals, dreams - building blocks to better spaces. I have been astonished at the difference! Instead of having strands of anger, depression, horror woven through the background of my mind, the music of the masters is layering hope.

This music has abided. So shall we, despite everything.

Filling the void

A favorite supervisor of mine is transferring to another branch. Sadness.

But as I think of it, any involvement with people embraces risk to you. And the more you depend on them for the definition of your personal happiness, the greater danger. People move on. They die, they transfer, they leave. Period.

So note to self. Prepare. One can build walls and never let anyone get close and dilute the joy of the moment. Or - one can say about a beloved mate, child, friend, colleague at the height of the happiness - this is a gift but only a gift. Enjoy it fully but understand you have zero control over its staying power.

Come to think of it - your own life is like that! Embrace the day as though it were fleeting. Give it all you got. Tomorrow may transfer to another branch.

lilacs

The word itself is softness.

The petals are yielding, the colors, even the deepest purple ones have a gentleness. And the scent....well, that's the most alluring of all  - and fleeting. When you enter a lilac bouquet room the pleasure is immediate, but quick. Some scents absolutely bring down the house, but lilacs have the most feathery affect. And maybe that elusiveness is why we love them so much. Their bloom time is so limited - actually their vase life is too. And to my knowledge, I have never encountered a soap or perfume that has even begun to capture the scent.

But then, perhaps the lilac is best left in that whispered fragile beauty whose fragrance we cannot breathe deeply enough to trap within us. It slips through our souls like moonlight and fairy dust.

To me, lilacs are childhood and Mother.... and I can never get enough.

Stop all the clocks

A friend of ours died last week. He was 46. His death came like a stroke of lightning with no warning, no shelter in place, no refuge.

From the words of all the broken-hearted people at the funeral and after-gathering his life had been a perpetual reaching-out, with love, grace, and generosity, curiosity, passion and kindness.

46 seems way, way too young to leave this world. But judging from the tears and laughter, he left an impressive footprint in our earthly soil.

Godspeed, Denis.

in the spring of the year

April is National Poetry month so I thought I should dreg up some of my earlier published pieces:

First Rite

In the early mist
a row of black parishoners
perched on the old barn's ridgepole,
feather folded,
awaiting
the sun's communion.



Haiku

Monarch butterfly
lights on rusty junkyard car-
chrysalis of tin.



Blue jay nibbling
on clustered hawthorn berries,
patriotic branch.



Magnolia buds,
swollen with April sunshine,
close to shouting time.



and last - a one-liner -

Alleluia sings my kite!

walk on my knees

I can see my mother down on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor.

Wow.

Now we have a Swiffer Generation. Zip in a disposable dry sheet for dusting, wet one for mopping, this done while standing erect with very little effort (and very little effect on the deep, down dirt, I might add).

Still, I remember the first time I washed up the kitchen floor - probably in my mid-teens - and thinking how arduous it was, and railing at the first person who tracked in dirt, my mother's age-old comment springing immediately to my lips -  'just look what you did to my nice clean floor!"

A little knee music goes a long way to understanding.

justice delayed

First Century Plutarch said:

"Thus, I do not see what use there is in those mills of the gods said to grind so late as to render punishment hard to be recognized and to make wickedness fearless."

Has he been hanging around the 21st Century doings?!

It's rather like being told as a child, if you make horrid expressions your face will stay that way. So the first time you revert immediately to normal behavior. Second time you persist a bit more. If nothing happens then, its wholesale assault!

Don't you sometimes wish those god mills would speed up and these outrageously immoral national actions would have some consequences for the Perpetrator-in-Chief?

no climate change in sight

Standing tall
with golden crowns,
February daffodils
preen.
Alas, March storms
sneak into town
and white now trims
the green!

We are all human

My poem about the silent fathers has arisen from stories both told to me from colleagues and friends, and recorded endlessly in novels. War is hell. 

We take either idealistic young people, or rebels to begin with, or financially diminished persons in hope of a leg up on life, and we pound into their every waking breath the concept of kill or be killed. We mold them into resistance to civility.

And when/if they return, we say, good luck with life on Main Street. And the internal stew bubbles ominously.

Sometimes "normal" life returns.
Sometimes the fire within blazes to consume all in its jagged path.

But whatever is visible above the surface the internal landscape must be littered with landmines.

Now there is talk of more war. Why can we never see beyond the dollars to the real price tag?

Daddy never spoke of the war

When his tour was over,
he came home,
unpacked his kit,
filled a modest brown box
with all the memories
of blood,
blown tissue
and breaking hearts,
taped it shut and
shoved it into the
darkest corner
of the cellar.

And he never
thought about them
again,
Except in quiet dawn,
starless nights,
and the unfilled spaces
between seconds.

lucky

On workday mornings, my radio eases on to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. What a glorious way to begin the day as his familiar voice rambles huskily through famous birthdays, not only of writers, but people who have made a difference in science, music, politics  - and every area of the arts. Today his poem was called "Lucky" and the last line was "as if you had/stacked up bricks/at random/ and built by mistake/ a lucky star."

And that's the way I feel, lucky.

The worst ills known to mankind could descend on me in the next hour, but I would have to acknowledge that I've had a lifetime of generosity - of birth, health, family, friends, work, home environments - just as if I were stacking the bricks at random and building a lucky star.

How can I not give thanks?

the gift

As a follow-up to My Name is Lucy Barton I had to wonder as I was sitting with my exquisite group of readers in the book club, what personal reactions poured into the mix - because after all we are all mothers and daughters. Since then I've discussed the book with a few friends and have found very strong reverberations among them - for good or bad. All I can say is that if I could awake and find my mother at the foot of my bed any day of the week, month or year I would be ecstatic! But I know that's a gift.

I do think that whenever a child has a major problem with the dynamics of the childhood home, that child's shoulders will be heavy for life. I'm not saying that people can't come to terms with whatever injustice or hardship, but that primal relationship - if skewed - is most difficult to untangle and shed completely.

So back to the gift. I say with each waking day, a smiling thank-you for my mother and father. I know that I did nothing to slide into my family of seven. They were all given to me. And as the tissue and wrappings fall away each day, I am humbled anew at my enormous good fortune.

Wrap-up of My Name is Lucy Barton

“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life…”

And that loneliness seeped into the very soul of Lucy Barton isolating her from much of the world despite marriage, children, and a successful writing career.

The story opens in a hospital room where Lucy, as a married adult with two small children, is convalescing from some mysterious complication following an ordinary appendectomy. Upon awakening one day she discovers her mother at her bedside – the mother she hasn’t seen for many years.

Mother. Comfort. Safety. Well, not exactly. Lucy’s life had begun in her uncle’s garage with little heat or water and fiber-glass walls for décor. In addition, her father had returned from the war with tortuous memories of murder and mayhem that skewed each wakening day. And the mother watched.

As a five-year-old Lucy was sometimes locked in her father’s dilapidated old pick-up as an alternative to child-care while both parents worked and the other siblings were at school. The sheer desperation of her tears streamed down through all of her days, in some ways locking her in that truck, with the one-time snake, forever.

Lucy escaped to college and later New York City, from garage to Chrysler Building. She never grasped, nor recovered from the wonder of it all. When she married a wealthy German, William, his mother proclaimed to her friends, “Lucy came from nothing.” Nothing or everything.

Meanwhile back at the hospital, Lucy discovers her husband had sent her mother air-fare to facilitate her visit .When she asks her mother, how she managed to navigate from their small town of Amgash, Illinois, to New York City – she replies tartly, “I have a tongue in my head and I used it.”  For once.

For five days, Mother and daughter tiptoe through the silent years, gossiping about home-town friends with failed marriages or other disappointments, speculating about the nurses giving them names like Toothache or Cookie, light-heartedly passing the hours – and avoiding all sleeping dogs in the room.

Aside from the sizable gift of presence, her mother is unable to bridge the gaping emotional ravine between them and all of Lucy’s longing cannot pull her to the other side. And so they remain, while an extraordinarily kind doctor shores up her sorrow, gently laying a hand on her healing scars.

Elizabeth Strout’s brilliant little volume shines with compassion, but its truth is delivered with rapier thrusts. “Everyone loves imperfectly,” claims one friend. Despite the sadness, Lucy blossoms under random kindnesses – from a gay friend, a mentor, a neighbor. Having been born into pain, she inadvertently delivers some to her own daughters, through a divorce and remarriage, but still she remains steadfast, acknowledging the pain “we hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: this is mine, this is mine.” The book closes with her remembering with gratitude the last soft light of day on the Illinois farmland.

But in the title she owns it all.

 My name is Lucy Barton.

clean sweep

For a while this morning as I cleaned, I had the TV on and was listening to the political chatter of the day. When I got to the point of some of the White House staffers trying to tone down DJT's tweet to Mexico which contain the phrase "bad hombres" saying he meant something more whimsical - nothing ominous, I had to set down mop, pail and temper! I could not be more embarrassed by this man. Was there ever a person in our highest office more juvenile? Seriously.

So I turned off the humiliation, and switched to the classical music station. Now, hours later, Brahms, Mozart and Mendelsohn have rescued me, smoothing out my soul furrows and renewing the sacredness of the day.

And the house looks cleaner, too! 

sitting on the dock of the bay

In my childhood, though we took many, many road trips, the staple highlight of the summer was a trip to the Chesapeake Bay to my uncle's cabin in a little resort called Red Point. Though it was only about 1 1/2 hour drive, it seemed an enormous journey to me.

Red Point had a large sandy beach, well, there was sand but also many pebbles, seaweed, scraps of driftwood, shells and general debris. The cabin was small, hot and in the beginning days there was no running water and an outdoor privy . In other words, it was heaven!

And there's the rub. We had a much nicer home in Lancaster County, but Red Point provided us with an entirely different lifestyle. The bay held endless beauty. To our small-town eyes that normally viewed rolling farm land, watching the sunshine dance across the water from all angles of the day, boating, swimming, parading around in the scantiest of clothes, no chores, all family play - it was nirvana indeed. It was not until years later when I went as an adult that I realized the severely narrow outlines of the place, how small, how poor, how lowly the surroundings were!

70 years has passed and I have seen glorious oceans, lakes, rivers in many countries yet my child's heart still leaps with joy at the first glint of vast blue of my beloved Chesapeake when I return each summer with my sister.

Because always our hearts see deeper than our eyes.

Soft o'er the fountain

Recently my sisters and I were discussing the momentum of our oldest brother's going to college and coming back home to our small town with new things, concepts, ideas. In the late 50"s on his first trip home as a freshman, he brought back a record album called "With Love From a Chorus," by the Robert Shaw Chorale. It's cover had a lady in a suggestive pose - which shocked my mother who later remedied the potential moral damage by pasting a country landscape over it! But the record was pure golden entertainment - lovely old romantic songs from the Civil War and much earlier times like - "Juanita," "Seeing Nellie Home," "Wait for the Wagon," "Aura Lee." Another cut, "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" goes way back to Ben Jonson in 1616! My husband pulled up the album on Spotify tonight and played it through an amplified speaker during dinner. Wow. In an instant I was back home in the kitchen and Mother was mashing the potatoes and putting the finishing touches on a roast pork dinner. And there was singing. And noise. And laughter. And family. Such a nuanced wave of memories washed over me to my fingertips.

I heard somewhere recently, music wounds us. Certainly it peels us wide  open to wonder, delight, sorrow, awe. As I listened, sixty wide years of memories funneled down to a point at the center of my being.

And my tears were of gratitude.

aloft

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T.S.Eliot

I have loved this quote for such a long time.

Once, when I was finished with the book, Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon, I closed the cover and immediately wrote to the author, and unbelievably he wrote back - in longhand! Mind you it was in the 1980's somewhere, but even then typewriters were invented! I told him in the note how much I loved the book and  that I thought the above quote nut-shelled his book. He agreed and said that the quote was in the book until about the fourth editing and he was glad I found it on my own.

I feel with Mr. Eliot that our search for happiness, success, peace, fulfillment - all take us far afield, until we return to that backyard of the heart where the swing touched the clouds and we soared.

the carrot seed

I am so proud of all the women, girls, boys, men who marched to send a message of strength to the new administration. This is really not about politics, it's about decency. I could not possibly be more ashamed of the adolescent we just elected president, and I am grateful to every voice of protest.

But I hope the marches will translate into policy. There's the rub. But still, a very large seed has been planted. And...

We'll water it
We'll pull the weeds,
Carrots grow from carrot seeds.

My queen

I have begun watching the Netflix series called The Crown. I always have an aversion to fictional shows or novels about real people, but I heard so much about this one that I wanted to give it a chance. I will return to Episode 2 - a leap for me, as increasingly I have become impatient with books, movies, etc., that don't catch my interest immediately!

But rather than the show itself, I was swept back through the years to my mother and her relationship with the Queen. She was fascinated. And the more I think about it, even though her formal education took place largely in a one-roomed schoolhouse with oiled floors, wood stove, outdoor privies, and scant resources of any kind, her mind bloomed and her imagination bore her aloft. For years after she vicariously traveled to worlds beyond her idyllic country home beside a creek, a mill and her cow Daisy. On the morning of Elizabeth's coronation in 1952, Mother got up in the wee hours to listen on the radio to the ceremony. On the radio, no less! And she faithfully followed her footsteps throughout her life.

Two queens. One who reigns within me forever.

big sleep

I am doing The Big Sleep with my book club this month. I'm not sure I read it before, but what a delight to go back to Chandler, the acknowledged standard of the hard-boiled novel. His use of metaphors describing the steamy streets of 1930's Los Angeles is amazing. There are guns, naked women, mobsters, pornography, gambling- the whole shadowy population all awash with corruption.

But his word-mating stops you in your tracks.

"I was forced to make a left turn and a lot of enemies."

"She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house."

"She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother for her."

"Under the thinning fog, the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness."

But despite all slap of chatter, Philip Marlowe aims for the knighthood of decency - "as honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style."

Hey, Marlowe, you're still needed.

when in Rome

There are no "bad" words..... as far as I'm concerned. How could one mixing of letters have a moral content - like dam, but add an n and pow!- quarter in the swear word jar!

But I do believe that words can injure by context. If I am with a person who thinks saying "heck" is heading down perdition's way, I think I need to consider not saying heck. I would be honoring the person's sensitivities, not the moral heft of the word itself.

But then, so many behaviors should be contextual! Example, a patron comes striding down the library walk, talking enthusiastically on his cellphone, enters the swinging doors and continues the private conversation at the same volume and spirit level, never mind that he has entered a silent room full of readers. Why would this not be a glaring misbehavior? Whenever I approach people and say quietly, "Can you take your conversation to the lobby, people here are trying to study", invariably they look surprised/stunned/chagrined at my words.

And I think it's because a large number of people no longer operate on context. They say - by action implication - here I am, accept me in whatever form. They don't say - oh, wait, this is a library, a church, an office, a business I should adapt to. No, they say, this is me, my language/behavior/dress/manners are who I am - take it or leave it.

Not all, thankfully, but far too many.

Context, people! Think about it!!

calm before

I guess the end of the Obama years is another example of you don't really value what you have until it's gone.

I would be quick to acknowledge that I didn't always agree with all that we did during his terms, but oh the feast of civility, humor and intelligence that we enjoyed daily! Every exit speech, interview, interaction of the first family is breaking my heart with its poignancy. We have had front-row seats to the first Afro-American family in the White House and what a diorama of dignity and grace, The contrast of values with the incoming occupants couldn't be starker.

I have friends, colleagues, patrons who are almost beside themselves with anxiety. Somehow we have to find quiet spaces to weather the storms ahead. God, and I truly mean God, help us all!

wish it wasn't so

I'm at the age where I have to concede, that unless I concentrate mightily, I can only keep track of a few things at a time. When I was twenty, I could be pondering an idea that would save humanity, and still be totally aware of brushing my teeth, sorting the mail, putting away laundry, etc., etc.,. Now if one thought is central, while I'm still doing all of these incidental things, when the big thought is done, I have no idea what I was doing during its reign! This has annoying consequences! I'm trying to shore up the trivia, but it ain't easy!

Thus another iteration of ...."as we age"......

When I was a child

The crossword puzzle clue was "children's game involving insect construction" and suddenly I was back home in Hinkletown, on the cracked linoleum of our front room, choosing a curved leg to insert into a black body! That Cootie memory had sat on the shelf for about 65 years, just gathering dust, waiting patiently to be hauled out and rejoiced over!

What followed was a email conversation with my sibs about the games we played as children. As usual we remembered different ones - probably due to age and interest. But as we delighted, argued, pouted, shouted over Parcheesi, Monopoly, Clue, Rook, Blockhead, Scrabble, etc., etc., look how we were learning about life! Its simply not a God-given attribute to be gracious about winning or losing. It has to be learned and practiced

And what day has passed in those 65 years since that Cootie exchange that we didn't draw on that sibling exchange?

Did Trump play games as a child? (!)

Somewhere

A bluebird flew on to our feeder.

The morning light lit up his soft hues.

Why is seeing that color in nature so thrilling?

Yes, there is blue sky. And blueberries. And delphiniums.

What am I missing? :)

Clearly, tons of blue things, but grant me, that blue is among the rarer nature shades.

And because the bluebird is associated with happiness and good fortune, I'm claiming this one as a harbinger of 2017.

And after all, birds fly over the rainbow.... why, then oh why, can't I?

Done.