It's a big world out there

 Have you ever wondered how the newest crop of kids - say the ones born from 2010 - will turn out?

 Probably just fine!

 But the point I have been pondering lately is, what does all this publicized visibility on Facebook, Instagram and however many platforms, do for a child's self-image?

 I think most of us born back in the 40's are lucky if a few black and white photos have survived through the decades. I have acquaintances on Facebook who post pictures almost daily of their children. I guess the balance-tipper was a photo-shoot of a 6 yr-old yesterday, posing coquettishly! She's beautiful no question, but how does that feed into the development of her inner self? What does that amount of adulation do to the formation of the child? I really don't know and maybe there are enough other forces to balance it all, but I have real fears as to how it can be sustained, topped.

I'm re-reading Beverly Cleary's Ramona series since the author's death and I see her insights into the workings of a child's mind in the 1950's. Her growing up dilemmas bounce off a small family, small town, small exposure. Today's mirror for those same hurdles is the universe. How does one find his/her way to personal stability?

 I don't envy the process.

the shy side of spring

 Violets.

Yes, one has their splashy magnolia, forsythia, dogwood, cherry blossoms, tulips, daffodils - the whole springtime parade of lavish color - and they are glorious! But what can top the beauty of the lowly violet clambering through the woodland paths, backing up against stone wall, nestling at the foot of trees?

These demure offerings that hold dark depths of blue-purple-lavender in four small petals elicit my fondest memories

Every Spring, as children, we picked a small bouquet of them, placed them in a cracked but lovely old cream pitcher and took them to an elderly friend who lived in - what is now a socially incorrect term - old people's home.(But really they were old and it was a home, so?)

Ellie, our ancient friend, was small and bent, walked down the steps backward so as not to be frightened by the descent, and lived for years in the tiniest of rooms that belched heat from the steaming radiators, causing my perpetually hot-flashed mother to fan and fan with whatever magazine or paper was at hand. We children sat on her bed, feet dangling quietly, and waited for the time we would be release and could rove about the shining waxed halls observing discreetly residential life.

The violets shone on her dresser.

We who embraced springtime. romping through the greening fields, hedgerows and meadows, gulping it down with abandon after the long winter, brought a token of rebirth to this place of diminishing light.

I never see a violet all these years later without thinking of Ellie, of youth and age, of the magic elixir of childhood, of majesty in miniature.

sound of the turtledove

 I was talking to a friend the other day about entitlement.

In this whole COVID nightmare, think how different the outlook would be if everyone said," I will vaccinate, wash my hands, keep my distance as long as it takes to lick this national problem."

In this whole gun violence nightmare, think how differently events would turn out if people would have be willing to, as a nation, get some viable laws on the books even though it may cause them to vary their ways of doing business a bit.

And on and on it goes with poverty, immigration, climate change, etc., etc.

We have inverted our wonderful gift of individual freedoms to enslave the masses.

Thank God, for the awakening earth with it's glorious scents, sounds and colors to remind us that rebirth is possible.

When lilacs bloomed

 I plucked one tiny sprig of lilac yesterday on my walk through the neighborhood paths and placed it in a small vial on my desk when I returned home. One sensual whiff transports me to Mother.

She loved lilacs and perhaps passed the love on to me umbilically! I remember a lovely old vase -with mottled creams, pinks and blue - where the lilacs resided when brought inside from the garden bush. Seemingly she could take any flower or greens, place them effortlessly in a container and have instant beauty. I used to ask her how she did it and she said something like -"you just feel it." And she added - "you will be able to with practice." And unbelievably, I was. As was my sister. The blood in our veins is attuned to flowers and their lines of beauty.

But the lilac, is there ever an equal to it's elusive fragrance? Lavender scents pillow the air. My small sprig has softly claimed my room.

Is there a lesson that it is so fleeting?

Whatever.

I will inhale most gratefully a few days a year

Shine on

 My mother often used to sing us out of bed with a little song from her childhood "Open all the windows, open all the doors, and let the merry sunshine in!" I remember it distinctly as if it hadn't happened some 70 years ago! I loved thinking of the sunshine as merry!

More was merry than the sunshine. My mother -and father- had hearts that were merry, not the joking, overt humor, but deep down happiness. And truly that opened all the windows and doors of my life. I hear of depression, anxiety, harshness of parents during childhood, let alone abuse and addiction, with such awe and sadness.

 I realize with each deepening year how fortunate I was to have grown up in a household where daily the merry sunshine was allowed to shine and the windows were wide open.

just a job

 Everyone has a job. 

It may be simply to get up in the morning or all the way to brain surgery.

Jobs get rewarded so differently - both monetarily and acclaim.

I for one, give fervent thanks to the unknown cleaner each time I enter a public restroom that sparkles. I consider that job almost sacred.

I think we all long to think that we make a difference with our life labors.

Decades ago a  head-on collision, among other things, jammed my wrist against the steering wheel left me with months of discomfort despite one round of surgery. The second was the charm. My surgeon said after the procedure," you may never do another push-up." In the many years since then not only are push-ups a regular part of my exercise, but I have not one twinge of pain in that wrist. 

To my surgeon, Dr. Kaplan, 

I am worlds beyond grateful for your brilliant hands.

chicken corn soup

Chicken corn soup.

Say those three words and I sail back on the magic carpet of childhood to Lancaster County and land in my mother's kitchen. It is one of aromatic scents that trigger home.

I don't know why the world hasn't caught on to this yet.

If one is being authentic, one simmers a chicken slowly to coax out that wonderful rich broth as the bedrock of this culinary pleasure.

Now, life and distance have produced many shortcuts, but I wouldn't dream of making this if I didn't have fresh corn in some form. The ingredients are few, but they have to be stellar-  chicken, corn, onions, celery, and noodles. 

That's it, no pretensions or fancy add-ons

Sipping that lovely brew evokes countless celebrations with family, friends, and neighbors.

But most of all one's tongue and spirit celebrate the delight of basic country goodness.

And it's simply the best.

A gracious plenty

I heard a person repeat a phrase of his mother's - "a gracious plenty".

If you were reared in the South, the saying is probably old hat.

As a northerner, I had never heard it.

But it fell immediately upon fallow soil within me.

I looked it up and I think it most often meant to visitors - stay for a meal- we can easily share.

I think I have often heard - "Stay, there's plenty of food."

But what a difference to the ear and heart is "gracious plenty."

Not only do we have enough food and space, they are laced with grace.

Though our country is riddled with disease, dissention and random slaughter, it is soothing to imagine with a little more conscious effort to share our gracious plenty we might feed our mutually starving souls.

March 20

 First day of spring.

Did four little words ever bear such excitement? I know we are always glad, but this year the possibilities seem majestic.

Might we really be on the brink of new life after a year of tiptoeing around death?

I know we are far from free of the pandemic, but even the door to hope being ajar is almost overwhelming.

I don't know what the weeks will bring but for now I take enormous joy in ...

-the titmouse singing for a mate all day long

-white, yellow, purple, lavender, blue crocus shining up between the dead leaves

-forsythia beginning to golden

-flickers drumming on our chimney

-daylight lingering

-bluebirds cleaning house

-daffodils shooting up overnight and dancing in the sunlight

All these, I embrace with gratitude and hope with their coming, freer footsteps will follow.

Ah, Spring!

proverb

" two's company, three's a crowd"

It's an old saying that is often applied to courting, is it?

I have always pondered it.

And much as I don't mean to be anti-social, I think it's really true! When interaction consists of two people, usually they can discuss ideas, work out things - happily, sadly, quietly, boisterously.

But add a third person and everything changes.

Suddenly, way more than before, people begin to weigh their responses now that two people are listening. They become self-conscious - either in an introverted or extroverted way.

There is a margin of safety, comfort, sure-footedness if it's just a face-to-face conversation. But add another face and the dynamics change. Significantly.

I think the author of the proverb was wise in the concept and wiser still in the choice of "crowd" rather than "group." Crowd suggests potential trouble, excess, lack of control.

Amazing the gulf between two and three.

Clear the board!

 Clap the erasers.

I wonder if that sentence were posed to children these days, asking for an explanation, would they have any idea?

Blackboards are still sometimes spotted in restaurants or bars featuring the daily special, but it's a rare occurrence.

Schools haven't used blackboards for years.

As for clapping the erasers....

It was one of my favorite chores at school. We would gather up all the erasers, gray-black felt ones covered with white chalk dust, and take them out behind the red brick schoolhouse and, well, clap them! Clouds of dust arose, and we rubbed them up and down against each other to clear them. The urge hit all of us to clap them against the red building, but we only did that once!

The simple economy of it all. The teacher wrote on the board; we copied her words in our notebooks. And don't you think there's a chance we learned more from the effort of seeing and copying - eye/brain/hand - than merely glancing at a handout?

 End of lesson, erase.

 End of week, clap the erasers.

My elementary education in a nutshell!

leaving the nest

Yesterday, I stumbled on to a childhood friend's FB feed and discovered that he is an avid follower of our former president, an anti-vaccination supporter and an LGBT opponent - a three-fer!

I mused upon this for the rest of the day. From time to time, unbidden came the thought that a childhood playmate now in his 70's holds these beliefs. And then I got to wondering where the crossroads in our lives had come.

I have to think that education is a big turning point.

That is not to say that my friend could have a PhD and still believe the things he does today. But I do believe that when life pushes you out of the nest you discover there's a whole world beyond woven sticks and grasses. In the process of flapping those wings in order to avoid crashing into the ground you develop a whole new set of evaluative muscles! 

Though life isn't free of disaster outside the nest, I'm really grateful for that first nudge into teetering flight.

 Three years into retirement, I suddenly received a note from a member of my library book club that I led for 18 years. She thanked me for guiding her reading back to the classics which she had read early in her life - as seemingly we all do - and retained very little having no life experiences to hang the literary value upon. She laughingly said the group's experience has made her impatient with lesser writing!

It was good to hear.

Retirement is like a still, reflecting pool of your own thoughts. While working, one gets constant feedback - good and bad - that help shape your thoughts. Apart from the bustle, sometimes it's hard to remember the relevance of your life's work.

I love life's little rainbows.

And now have a few notes to write of my own.

let the breezes blow

I have an old childhood bench by my bedroom window. This March dip into Springtime allowed me to have an open window for much of the week.

Heaven.

There simply is nothing to compare to that first soft Spring breeze drifting through the winter-bound window!

The air is diffused with pastel light and there are no words for the warm, coolness of it.

On this day I give thanks for the inventor of windows - that open.

And winter hearts that do as well.

working the line

I spent one summer on an assembly line in the egg department of a chicken processing plant.

One summer.

And during that summer I remember just scouring my mind for entertainment! I kept going through movies, books, vacations, whatever happy thing I could think of to ease the boredom of snatching small, medium, large cartons of eggs off the revolving table before me, putting them in the appropriate boxes, taping them shut when filled, and shoving them onto another conveyor belt.

That was it.

I remember too looking closely at the lady, Bertha, who worked beside me who had done this all her life. I simply couldn't conceive of it.

And while it shocked my young mind it also taught me a life-long lesson of empathy. I understand that Bertha didn't view the job through my lens. She may have also found it boring, but it may literally have meant medication for her aching back, food on the table, heat in the house, a house.

People have to do menial jobs to survive and we are the beneficiaries of their labors.

The pandemic took these people in processing plants out by the hundreds all over the county. At one plant they pray together before they hit the line, hoping to survive the day - not from boredom, but ravaging illness.

My heart aches for the Berthas.

toss it!

 Closets.

Oh, what a double-edged sword.

So convenient for shoving things into dark recesses.

But when the time of reckoning comes, ah, the sorrow!

Why did I ever buy, keep, continue to store? The  questions ricochet off my sensibilities!

It is so releasing when some greater force pushes through the nostalgia and what-if's of an item's worth and just grandly sweeps the useless items away!

De-cluttering.

Good for soul and closet.

country roads

 "We're going for a ride."

Those simple childhood words. Declarative. Purposeful. Open-ended.

We said them all the time and off we'd jump on our three-speed bikes, no helmets, busy highway until we would branch off to idyllic back roads.

Mother would say "Okay, be careful, be back by supper."

Did she worry about our safety? I really don't think so. We had good bikes; we usually had good judgment; there were always at least two of us together. She knew we wouldn't get lost.

She had faith in us and the world, in a word.

Was life so vastly different then? I think it was - at least our safe little slice of it.

The  world we pedaled by held tiny streams, creeks, covered bridges, fields smelling of new hay as well as manure, birds in flocks against wide blue skies, cows munching in wayside pastures, farmers on tractors working the soil, family laundry flapping against the sun and wind.

We had no idea.

It was truly a ride.

What a gift!. Soon enough, as roads led out of childhood, we would discover the underbelly of all that innocence.

Still, it is my staying point.

Passing

 In reflecting upon the pandemic there is so much immeasurable loss. But one that I have thought about in the last day is the loss of celebration - of birth, of marriage, of death, of graduation, of retirement.... the list goes on and on. All these events are shared - in the best of times.

I was just thinking about two lives lost in my family - a niece and a cousin. In their lives they absolutely sparkled, touching and igniting so many other lives. Their passing normally would have produced sizable gatherings of people who loved them.  And yes you can zoom, write in whatever form, call - all of which are useful. But the power that comes from touching - hand to hand, hug to hug, visible tears to hearty laughter in recollection - it's just not calculable how much of a difference that brings to the healing process. There is such a resounding stillness to loss in these days of isolation.

All the more reason to remember aloud with love and give new life to those who have passed in such unforgiving silence. 

keep on truckin'

 I was reading in my mother's 1957 diary and came upon the entry about our end-of-year school picnic. The two room school we attended consisted of Lower (Grades 1-4) and Uppers (Grades 5-8). The Uppers always ruled everything, of course. One's early goal was to reach the Uppers!

The school picnic usually consisted of everyone bringing food of some sort and the school providing hot dogs and ice cream.(Unbelievably, at a 40+yr reunion many people still remembered Anna Hoover's deviled eggs from those occasions! Talk about making a culinary name for oneself!)

But in 1957, the tides turned, and Sam Good, a local lumberman, brought his truck and loaded all the Uppers on the open back and hauled us off to Cloister Dairies for ice cream. Today's liability issues fairly scream at the notion, but as far as I know, nary a thought was given at the time. What could possibly go wrong with a load of boisterous farm boys and girls on the back of an open truck???

Perhaps evolution is a viable concept after all.

rhythm of today

 "No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day, or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance with the music of today - or we will always be out of step." (Lisa Wingate from the book Before We Were Yours)

As I age, I am remembering bygone melodies a lot! But I think however old or young, the wisdom of the above statement is enduring. There is so much to be said for dancing in the moment. 

With the specter of Covid looming for the past year, I think it's tempting to just mark time - always looking forward to when we can travel, go to public meetings, eat out, visit family, etc.. But meanwhile we have precious time to do something with!

And dancing seems just right.

Move into the rhythms of confinement, stretch mind, body and soul and do get those toes tapping! Life is now!