When You're Having Fun

When I was a kid, I used to think that summer flew by. It always seemed that I had just shed my dull brown-and-tan uniform for shorts and sneakers when I had to suit up again for another year of sitting up straight with my hands folded, for another year of books and notebooks and homework.

However, summers have been rocketing by at hyper-speed since we retired. Maybe it's just that, lacking resident students at our house, we have no markers for the seasons. Last day of school isn't all that different from the other days in June. Maybe we've just had too many places to go and things to do this summer. San Diego, Chautauqua, West Virginia, Charlottesville...And our local environment hasn't helped with the sort of clues I remember. Stores have not been good guides to the calendar, trumpeting back-to-school savings minutes after the 4th of July sales disappeared. The Nats are winning: doesn't that usually stop in August? t think I just turned the page marked July, and now they tell me it's nearly September and there are only 125 days till Christmas? Wait just one minute, here, folks.

The issue here is that I have a few "To Do" lists that have completion dates scheduled for the end of summer. My patio was to have been cleaned up, plants replaced, vines trimmed, furniture cleaned, and weeds eradicated. That side garden needs to be reworked entirely. We were going to have the gutters cleaned and checked, a watering system arranged, and the fountain cleaned of all that green gunk. Inside, the bookshelves were to be inspected and culled of those books we really don't need to have (that includes the cookbook accumulation that has overrun the family room shelves.) Also on the list are the two hanging counter-lamps that are performing some vicious tag-team blackout maneuver. No sooner do we replace one lightbulb than the other goes out, leaving us squinting at the morning paper. The electrician was to be called as soon as we purchased replacements this summer. There's a bathtub that needs re-coating that has been peeling in leprous patches for nearly a year. All this stuff was scheduled for these couple months when we had a little spare time, and now, you tell me it's over? What about the clothes closets I was going to sort through? The trunk full of photographs that clamor for organization? The stuff that has accumulated on the kitchen counters and under virtually every piece of furniture capable of holding a storage drawer?

It can't be September yet. I'm not ready. But...are those chrysanthemums I see at the nursery?

August

It has been a week. I (thankfully) have had 6 straight pain-free days, which leads me to believe that (finally) I may be recovered from the effects of my late June/ early July mishaps. However, though I am better, it is clear that the world is not. Iraq and Missouri, far from the "unrest" cited in TV headlines, seem to be exploding with anger and violence, along with the Middle East in general. D.C. has had a rash of shootings, including a three-year-old who was in the right place at a very wrong time, when an argument over clothing (which is too absurd to credit) erupted into an episode of random gunfire. What (I ask yet again) is the world coming to?

The world has additionally been seized with grief over the suicide of Robin Williams, and the recognition that depression is a dangerous (and virtually unaddressed) reality in our lives. Before all of these distractions, Virginia at least was voyeuristically following the ethics trial of a former governor, Bob McDonnell, and his extravagant wife: a soap opera of greed and  consumerism and influence-peddling gone crazy. What (we ask again) is WRONG with people?

And in the midst of all this, in the midst of this horrifying mashup of guns and geography, protests and police, deaths and destruction, Ebola is terrorizing Africa, and, here at home, water mains are breaking and our infrastructure is being compromised, and nature is gracing us with deluges that flood our streets and parking lots.

Here is my wish (and yes, I understand that it's an impossibility): one week without murder, without guns, without protests, without natural disasters, without advertised pain, without strident political posturing, without stupid reality programming,  without prominent evidence that the world is indeed 'a tale told by an idiot', without pictures of children (or anyone else) suffering and dying here or anywhere else in the world, without even the SPCA ads featuring abused animals.  One week to catch our collective breath.

I wish for a week of what I'd LIKE  to believe is normal, a week without what I FEAR is becoming the norm.

Judgment Day

 ...or maybe I should call it "Power Outage"

On the day the world ended

it rained torrents and the wind

blew out the wires;

we had no power

and batteries ran low

(and Pepco apologized

and promised to do better)

and no one knew

that the world had ended

because we had no phones

or laptops or iPads

to stream the news

and we’d forgotten

how to communicate

otherwise.

This is the way the world ends,

this is the way the world ends:

not with a bang:

nor even a twitter..

Back to some poetry...

Falling

I am forgetting

already. Barely a month

and only the occasional

twinge recalls what used to be:

the worry and pain and interrupted

sleep, a life on pause,

disrupted plans, dependence.

Unable to carry or open or twist

or walk or fasten, put on or take off

anything.

A single opposable thumb.

A single functional wrist.

A single functional leg to stand on,

the other being

undependable except for pain.

Pain is reliable, I found,

mornings when I weighed pain

against the benefits of standing erect,

evenings when I debated

strategies for climbing into bed--

gone now. Gone

except the infinitesimal ache,

the pinpoint of memory,

the glimpse of the future.

I’m getting old.

Chautauqua, Year 3

We are back from Chautauqua again--the most fun one can have in a place spelled with three 'u's. (I know that makes no sense, but since when is that a requirement?) In any case, you will be relieved to hear that the little town of Chautauqua has not changed overmuch, though the campaign to build a new and better amphitheater (mousetrap?) is underway.

For the uninitiated, Chautauqua is essentially a summer camp for families: grandparents, other adults, teenagers, children, babies and all that fall in between. There are lectures, classes, music, ballet, theater, opera, literary events, and entertainment of all kinds, both popular and classical. As if this weren't enough, it all takes place in a Victorian setting: houses loaded with gingerbread and porches and rocking chairs, all with breathtaking gardens, crowded with color to the nth degree.

We have attended for one week for the past three summers, sharing a house with friends, taking turns preparing dinner, sometimes dining out and always, comparing notes. This is, I must say, the way to go. It is always a pleasure to share experiences, but this arrangement allows us time to discuss the speakers and their subjects, and to air our (various) opinions on the topics broached.

If I had to pick one thing that I most liked about Chautauqua, it is that experience. We seem to have lost the knack of serious conversation in our daily lives. I know that is an exaggeration, but I can't remember spending an entire evening discussing scientology (or the like) in the past year. We did that this week. Two lectures a day: one on the theme (The American West for this week) and one on religion. In between, there are classes on a variety of topics, ranging from history to art to technology, from yoga to zumba, from sailing to photography. The evening programs are the icing on the cake: classical music to classic movies and bluegrass to ballet. The Chautauqua experience is truly getting away from it all--and taking only the best stuff with you.

One of the best parts is that you are (for one week only) semi-divorced from the hassle of your everyday world. You don't have to drive anywhere; no one is calling you for meetings; no decision is more urgent than deciding what's for lunch.  Sit back on the porch and relax. Play 'Name that Tune' with the carillon that plays three times a day. Read a book. Look at the lake. Develop an affinity for sunsets--or sunrises. Watch the kids on Bestor Plaza wading in the fountain or pogo-sticking down the brick walk. Get an ice cream or a cup of coffee. The world can be your oyster, if only for a week each summer. You're at Chautauqua.

Home again, home again...

We are again home--without a fat pig, and emphatically without the 'jiggety-jig'. In fact, our latest 6-7 hour drive left us stiff and sore and ready for a good night's sleep. 

I have spent this spring and summer marking off chunks of calendar space and prefacing almost every statement with “After we get back from…” I have ALMOST run out of these blacked-out calendar spaces, and was starting to whip out my ever-present ‘To-Do” list for home when JC reminded me that we have two trips in the offing for the fall. I hadn’t thought about the fall. That had seemed too far away. But it is now knocking on our door…one month till Labor Day. Damn.

But, in this all-too-brief respite, lasting from now till then (with only a couple weekend trips in between!!!) I am enjoying a few generally unrecognized indulgences: my shower with the right brand of soap and shampoo; my bed with the perfect combination of sheet and blanket for the temperature on our thermostat; my kitchen, and the pantry that has all the weird ingredients for whatever recipe I choose, and the cabinets that hold the appropriate pots and pans; the drawers and closet that yield appropriate clothing for unpredictable weather… I am rejoicing in not having to read a manual to decipher the vagaries of television and internet, in walking out my gate and getting in the car without crossing expanses of parking lots and shrubbery, in being able to run a load of laundry as needed.  The little comforts of home.

Home is the place to stop and recharge, to be quiet, to re-establish a baseline, to evaluate and reset. Home is necessary. Travel is broadening--of this, there is no doubt--but coming home is not the least of its concomitant pleasures.

Apologies

I reread my post of last week--re: beautiful disasters, and in light of the distinctly non-beautiful, gut-wrenching, unnecessary and any-other-adjective-that -tries-to-convey-horror disaster that occurred recently, I am so sorry. My problems, my 'disasters', my rants are strictly of the first-world variety. I cannot comprehend the wholesale slaughter of innocents, whether in the air over the Ukraine or in the streets of Gaza and Jerusalem. There is no beauty in the death of a child. There is no rationalization for the killing of teenagers over the proprietorship of a sliver of land.

Who ARE these people? This week I am at Chautauqua, and the celebrant at the Sunday service today spoke about inclusiveness vs. the very human need to 'be right'. The scripture reading was about Jesus' disciples' complaint about non-followers healing the sick and casting out demons in Jesus' name--without being part of the twelve. Jesus gave the hard advice that they should not care; that invoking His name puts these healers and demon-drivers in the right camp, whether they were followers or not; that rejecting people with whom you disagree can be a stumbling block to your own salvation. People come to God in different ways and we need to be aware of the possibility, nay, certainty, that our way is not the only way. Okay. I can buy that.

And yet, I find it hard to accept people who believe so strongly in their own rectitude that they can discount human life. No. Make that: I find it impossible that anyone of any religion can use its principles to justify the sacrifice of anyone, much less the lives of children. I am haunted by a reporter's  description of a three-year-old child in a red t-shirt, flung into a field by a missile attack on a commercial airliner. My granddaughter is three. That child was someone's granddaughter, the light of someone's life, a mischievous face begging for candy or a toy or ice cream. A child who knew nothing of politics or religion. No god could demand her sacrifice. No god that I could recognize, anyway. No 'beautiful disaster' here.

But we are supposed to shut our eyes--pluck them out!--if seeing this and feeling hatred for the perpetrators gets in the way of walking in God's footsteps.. "The opposite of faith is certainty." If that is true, then I must have faith, because I simply don't know how this can possibly work.

O God, help thou my unbelief.