Against all odds

Listening to an old John Pryne album over breakfast -

"In spite of ourselves,

We're sitting on a rainbow

Against all odds,

Honey, we're the big door prize!"

My retirement  thoughts exactly!

Against all odds.

Beyond the heat

I heard a report this morning about a section of Malibu that was scorched by wildfires last fall and all that was left was blackened stumps of trees. Now, it is ablaze with wildflowers! And the greenest green the natives have ever seen, reminiscent of Ireland's rolling hills.

There is something so heartening about that - out of the fire, gold.

The heat of political turmoil, personal tragedy, illness, gun violence, racial unrest sometimes seems to leave only charred spiky ruins.

I cling to those wildflowers.

I wanna hold your hand

There was an article in this morning's paper about a therapist who helps couples decide whether or not they should have children!

I really thought I had seen everything.

Mind you, anything that makes couples more thoughtful about having children, in good conscience I have to be for, because I think people are generally mindless about parenting. They have children because the mother-in-law wants a grandchild, the father-in-law wants a name-bearer, other people are doing it,  because it's the expected thing, because they want to dress up a little girl or teach a son to play catch!

Actually I think a modest percentage of our population should have children!

It's not that children aren't exquisite entities, but because it's an endeavor undertaken like no other. From that moment of birth to the day you or they die, children are your passionate delight and worry - 24/7 for the rest of your life! And so few people think beyond that inexorably adorable blanketed bundle the nurse places in your newly crooked arms.

But if it takes therapy for that kind of realism to set in, so be it. However, whatever happened to two people being able to communicate with each other on a decision as intimately personal as this one? 

Maybe there should have been more therapy before those two people became involved!

living codes

This college admissions scandal has take away my breath.

While repugnant, I somewhat understand students cheating on tests, etc., because they are still young and especially susceptible to pressures from the world at large. But from these accounts the parents are the instigators! This is so utterly disheartening - is the whole world going mad?!

If a parent stoops to this type of tactic at the college-admissions level, think how generally murky the moral code must be in that household! 

And once again, the words of my mother come floating back to me on the heels of some perceived personal wrong - "and what had you done?" There was always that nudge of accountability.

What percentage of the world is trying to see what he/she can get away with?

Maybe I really don't want to know.

separation

I just saw a picture this morning of brown-skinned girls lining up on the way to be separated from their parents at the border. And I paused to consider.

As a child, when I came eagerly home from school and walked in the doorway to our kitchen, if Mother wasn't there on the very rare occasions and a note was on the table indicating a quick errand, I can still feel the letdown. She wasn't there for me to tell her about the afternoon - I had just seen her for lunch - and it felt really wrong, and lonely.

Now I don't pretend to be comparing my privileged, safe, comfortable lapse of an hour of maternal presence to these children at the border. But I think I can take my sand-grain of missing and magnify it a million times and then maybe get to the doorway of what these children must be feeling. As a child you want the presence of your mother or father in the way that you want food, water and air to breathe.

Of all our sins as a nation, this separation of parent and child sits at the head of the class.

I grieve for them.... and us.

rude awakening

Once,
Jim Jones
sang a siren song
in the jungle
serving Kool-Aid  
as a chaser.

We shook
collective heads
in horror
wondering,
why?


Now,
grimly,
we are
beginning 
to
understand,
how.

deep breath

"now is the winter of our discontent"....

I know Shakespeare had quite a different scenario in mind, but discontent and winter both seem to shine in the month of March!

We want Spring!

We have teaser days - crocus are blooming and the sun dances over the lake. Next day, cold sleeting rain or snow itself. Thus, discontent!

It is March that teaches patience - which we need in every pore of our bodies and souls, particularly our political souls!

I've seen the snowdrops and the edging of yellow green on bushes.

I will be content.

when johnnie comes marching home

 Part two of PTSD observations in the past day -

On the national news an American Vietnam War veteran was being interviewed in Hanoi and he expressed how at the end of his tour of duty he hoped never to see the country again. But now, all these decades later, he has been back many times engaged in charitable works of different sorts. When asked about his PTSD he said that he suffers all the time, but far less when he is in Vietnam because here he feels like in a small way he is giving back to a country we wronged in so many ways.

Ah, yes. And the unholy beat of war goes on and on. And the carnage on the field is just the beginning.

still waters run deep

I was listening to an Iraqi war veteran describe how raising sheep has helped to keep her PTSD at bay, She had watched the herdsmen in Iraq in the midst of all the horrendous carnage with amazed curiosity. After she returned home with severe injuries she was drowning in flashbacks until she struck out on the sheep farming path. Now after 8 years she said that when she feels herself slipping toward the dark edge, she moves among her flock and their gentle steadiness brings her back.

 How beautifully new are the words of the Psalmist - "he leadeth me beside the still water, he restoreth my soul"