This morning I linked up to Spotify and the 50's as I was doing my morning crossword puzzle. It took me forever to complete because I had to get up and dance every second song! Those wonderful, catchy-tune/ridiculous-lyric songs!! As each new one popped up I could feel myself being transported back to the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen of our Hinkletown home!
Saturday morning's Your Hit Parade really messed up my cleaning procedures which were sketchy at best and very distractible. Mother's instructions were to dust and sweep the living room and I recall a very superficial interpretation! But the music soared and sweetened the chore. Love yearned for, achieved, lost, mourned, warned against, and sought all over again!
And the living room never really did get cleaned.
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Jumping rope.
The two words evoke all kinds of images to me. I guess mainly I think of recess at Hinkletown School when we would stream out of the oiled floored classrooms and grab that rope. It had to be heavy enough to swing perfect arcs providing safe, predictable rhythms to enter the dance. It was one activity that our "modest" dresses didn't produce a show of underwear for the ever vigilant farm boys eyes! Recent attempts at rope-jumping have revealed to me that it is utterly exhausting! But still in the early days we lined up, two or three jumping at one time and the rest waiting their turn. Fifteen minutes of cardio before we returned to our desks.
But the big guns in rope jumping happened at events like farm sales - I remember one in particular where a big rope was put into action on a wide wooden barn floor. I can't even imagine that the girls could turn it, but that rope was lethal! I remember one girl misjudged her entry timing and that harsh, prickly, huge rope neatly snapped her glasses in two! Not to mention the "brush-burns" resulting from the rope hitting a too-slow arm or leg!
No one told us it was good exercise, it was just good fun! Different accounts take its origin back to ancient China. The Dutch seem to get the early credit in America - maybe that's why we called the simultaneously swung ropes Double Dutch! In any case, it is lovely to think of children all through the ages delighting in this simple, exhilarating event. A rope, an arm, two agile feet.
No wifi required.
The two words evoke all kinds of images to me. I guess mainly I think of recess at Hinkletown School when we would stream out of the oiled floored classrooms and grab that rope. It had to be heavy enough to swing perfect arcs providing safe, predictable rhythms to enter the dance. It was one activity that our "modest" dresses didn't produce a show of underwear for the ever vigilant farm boys eyes! Recent attempts at rope-jumping have revealed to me that it is utterly exhausting! But still in the early days we lined up, two or three jumping at one time and the rest waiting their turn. Fifteen minutes of cardio before we returned to our desks.
But the big guns in rope jumping happened at events like farm sales - I remember one in particular where a big rope was put into action on a wide wooden barn floor. I can't even imagine that the girls could turn it, but that rope was lethal! I remember one girl misjudged her entry timing and that harsh, prickly, huge rope neatly snapped her glasses in two! Not to mention the "brush-burns" resulting from the rope hitting a too-slow arm or leg!
No one told us it was good exercise, it was just good fun! Different accounts take its origin back to ancient China. The Dutch seem to get the early credit in America - maybe that's why we called the simultaneously swung ropes Double Dutch! In any case, it is lovely to think of children all through the ages delighting in this simple, exhilarating event. A rope, an arm, two agile feet.
No wifi required.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Break!
Yesterday was the first visit to the pool for the summer - for me. It struck me how that I have been using Reston pools for 38 years and while the externals change, updates in pool furniture, personnel, accessories, some things never change!
First, the inanity for the ice-cream truck's tinny song that cranks on forever and ever, The Entertainer's endless monotonous calliope tinkle, luring in the kids as surely as moths to a flame. The there is the lifeguard's incessant whistle for swim lane invasion, hanging on the ropes, "NO RUNNING" orders, and the perpetual game of Marco Polo that manages at some point to push you into the teeth-grinding mode.
All distractions.
But other than that - the first time my hot, flushed body ducks under the water, swimming across the bottom through the aqua, sunlit water, and surfaces with a sigh, I know I'm home.
Summer and Reston pool-time. Such a far cry from the Conestoga Creek!
First, the inanity for the ice-cream truck's tinny song that cranks on forever and ever, The Entertainer's endless monotonous calliope tinkle, luring in the kids as surely as moths to a flame. The there is the lifeguard's incessant whistle for swim lane invasion, hanging on the ropes, "NO RUNNING" orders, and the perpetual game of Marco Polo that manages at some point to push you into the teeth-grinding mode.
All distractions.
But other than that - the first time my hot, flushed body ducks under the water, swimming across the bottom through the aqua, sunlit water, and surfaces with a sigh, I know I'm home.
Summer and Reston pool-time. Such a far cry from the Conestoga Creek!
Monday, June 25, 2018
walking along
Walking along,
I picked
an early morning bouquet
of snowballs,
sheeting fountains,
blue skies,
swaying day lilies,
swooping swallows,
dancing lakes,
- and tied them all up
with a cool breeze bow.
Monday,
may I present
a small token
of my profound appreciation!
.
I picked
an early morning bouquet
of snowballs,
sheeting fountains,
blue skies,
swaying day lilies,
swooping swallows,
dancing lakes,
- and tied them all up
with a cool breeze bow.
Monday,
may I present
a small token
of my profound appreciation!
.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
and away we go
Our library's summer reading program's theme is "Reading Takes You Everywhere."
And the first time I saw that I went flying back - mentally - to Nancy Drew and her adventures! As a child I may have lived in a sleepy little village in Lancaster County, but with ND's help I was exploring spooky passageways that led to cobwebbed attics, or tracking down a gang of counterfeit swindlers in caves, or following malicious doctors into private hospitals where patients were being held prisoners - the world's oyster had cracked wide open!
And thus one of the greatest pleasures of my life began.
Think of the gift of reading - mere words on a page transporting you far beyond the limits of your world wherever it may be, however old/young rich/poor, ill/healthy you are.
And for a little while you are completely and gloriously lost. Amazing.
Now, back to Magpie Murders.
Monday, June 18, 2018
faith of our fathers
Another postscript to Father's Day -
I am reading Tender is the Night and came upon this gorgeous passage as Dick Diver kneels in the old cemetery by his father's grave:
"These dead, he knew them all, their weather-beaten faces with blue flashing eyes, the spare, violent bodies, the souls made of new earth in the forest-heavy darkness of the seventeenth century. 'Good-bye, my father, and all my fathers.'"
Sometime I think we fret that the world as we know it will simply implode from all the deadly news.
But those who have gone before us have left deep, hopeful footsteps for us to follow.
Or ignore.
I am reading Tender is the Night and came upon this gorgeous passage as Dick Diver kneels in the old cemetery by his father's grave:
"These dead, he knew them all, their weather-beaten faces with blue flashing eyes, the spare, violent bodies, the souls made of new earth in the forest-heavy darkness of the seventeenth century. 'Good-bye, my father, and all my fathers.'"
Sometime I think we fret that the world as we know it will simply implode from all the deadly news.
But those who have gone before us have left deep, hopeful footsteps for us to follow.
Or ignore.
Saturday, June 16, 2018
father's day
Father's Day.
The more books I read, the shows I watch, the programs I listen to, the people I meet and hear the father accounts, I want to blurt out my story. But my background tells me that would be bragging - although I had not the slightest thing to do with being my father's daughter.
As I think of my childhood, Dad is always there, physically, spiritually, morally, socially - name the way. He was our rock, our staying point, our refuge, our background color, our protector, our benefactor. I scratch the years for faults and of course there were short-comings of day-to-day living - sometimes being late for something, sometimes taking too much time for someone else, but you see what I mean-its really vague. He did have expectations of behavior and beliefs, but they were so in line with all our friends, neighbors, church members, relatives that they didn't seem onerous.
He was quiet, gentle, long-suffering, charitable, forgiving, but never dull. He had an adventurous spirit that pushed him from the earliest days to travel. He would get "wild ideas" according to my home-loving mother, and after much persuasion, she'd relent and join him on the open road.
I don't know what he would have accomplished with formal education because he had his own business at the end of his teens and when at last he retired in his sixties, he took a realtor exam and sold houses at his leisure. He was never wealthy, but always comfortable and shared his bounty with us, the neighbors, the extended family, the world.
And when he died suddenly at 71 we knew that our mother thought that until that day she had been the luckiest woman in the world. Ditto his children.
So, on this Father's Day, I don't want to brag, but I walked with one of the great ones - for 38 years.
And I cherish each in his presence and in his memory.
The more books I read, the shows I watch, the programs I listen to, the people I meet and hear the father accounts, I want to blurt out my story. But my background tells me that would be bragging - although I had not the slightest thing to do with being my father's daughter.
As I think of my childhood, Dad is always there, physically, spiritually, morally, socially - name the way. He was our rock, our staying point, our refuge, our background color, our protector, our benefactor. I scratch the years for faults and of course there were short-comings of day-to-day living - sometimes being late for something, sometimes taking too much time for someone else, but you see what I mean-its really vague. He did have expectations of behavior and beliefs, but they were so in line with all our friends, neighbors, church members, relatives that they didn't seem onerous.
He was quiet, gentle, long-suffering, charitable, forgiving, but never dull. He had an adventurous spirit that pushed him from the earliest days to travel. He would get "wild ideas" according to my home-loving mother, and after much persuasion, she'd relent and join him on the open road.
I don't know what he would have accomplished with formal education because he had his own business at the end of his teens and when at last he retired in his sixties, he took a realtor exam and sold houses at his leisure. He was never wealthy, but always comfortable and shared his bounty with us, the neighbors, the extended family, the world.
And when he died suddenly at 71 we knew that our mother thought that until that day she had been the luckiest woman in the world. Ditto his children.
So, on this Father's Day, I don't want to brag, but I walked with one of the great ones - for 38 years.
And I cherish each in his presence and in his memory.
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