Birthdays

Today is my birthday. Today I am celebrating my existence on this planet, and the fact that I have managed to hang on for 62 years. If statistics don't lie, I should be entitled to another 16 or more years, if I take care of myself.

Compare that to our animal friends and I'm doing pretty good.

• I have already outlived the average donkey (and the scary crocodile) by 15 years.
• I am over 4 times the age that could be expected by the most optimistic chicken.
• The Queen bee, waited on hand and foot, only lasts 5 years at best, and her poor worker bees are doomed to a year, max.
• The pigeons that decorate my car survive only a third as long as I have (they have that coming)
• The ox (which I can be stubborn as) isn't so stubborn after all in the living department. Twenty years.
• The guinea pigs, dogs and cats and horses I've cleaned up after over the years (how's that for a prepositional construction, folks?) can't keep up with me. I will outlive them all--this a reminder to Jake, who woke me up this morning at 5 AM: I will prevail.
• And, to the squirrels that dig up my carefully planted daffodil bulbs: DIE! I can wait you out.

Of course, the box turtle has me beat: 123 years, which makes me wonder why we endanger life and limb and risk disastrous pileups to save them as they creep across the road in front of our cars. Squirrels we slaughter with abandon, apparently, but not those decrepit turtles.

All this aside, I am grateful beyond measure for every year I've had, or can expect to have. I am grateful for the family and friends who make these 62 years seem like the lifespan of a gnat. I am the luckiest person I know, thanks to all of you.

Oh, Lord, it's coming!

Christmas, that is. I really love Christmas. It's the getting ready that drives me round the bend. I'm not a great gift-buyer, so that cloud of anxiety starts hovering around this time. I also start thinking about Christmas cards and when I should start sending them. I remember a cousin of my mother's--Arminda, her name was-- who dutifully mailed out her Christmas greetings before Thanksgiving. I suspect she was either not quite right, or else, phenomenally organized (which implies the former state anyway.) In any case, I haven't bought mine yet--but I am sending out change of address cards, if only to spare the inhabitants of our old house the pile of Christmas cards that might go astray. They are on their own as far as catalogs go..and they will see a lot of them, I'm sure.

For some reason, I am also the editor of our church's Advent devotional booklet--allowing me the privilege of badgering people for contributions (literary, not monetary) and fiddling around with cover design (I frittered away the greater part of today on that), not to mention writing a self-assigned poem for the book. Done today! At least the first draft. And not a moment too soon, as I need to xerox the cover, print the assorted pages, collate and assemble--all before November 21. Gack.

To look forward to: cookies, figuring out how to decorate this new house, deciding whether or not to do a party of some sort, getting a tree (and maybe a second one for the front window)..the Christmas Readings at church (a delight that I never took advantage of until about three years ago!), the Scottish Walk, which I love...and so many more 'joys of the season'...

Anyway...attached is this year's poem in rough form which may or may not change, depending on the time available for further tinkering:

Perspectives

There’s a baby in our house this Christmas

and that makes all the difference--

A child’s eyes, unjaded by the past,

eyes that see a simpler world,

devoid of disappointment

and grim visions of the future.

Put a baby in our hearts this Christmas.

Give us babies’ eyes

to see as we ought to see—

through the Christmas-colored lenses

of belief and hope and love

that only the child in us can wear.

Make us children again this Christmas.

Tell us a story-- the simplest of stories:

that God keeps His promises,

through all the ages;

and, just to remind us,

He sends us a baby:

a baby at Christmas-time—

our new beginning.

--Mary McElveen--

Christmas 2010

Requiems

Autumn has not been kind this year. For two weeks running, we will have attended memorial services for friends stricken by cancer, and heard of and visited friends in hospitals and rehab centers. Is there an imaginary line somewhere-- like the International Date Line-- that marks the border between reasonable good health and steady decline? If so, give me the coordinates so I can steer my boat around it.

All of a sudden, all those admonitions to eat right and exercise and monitor my health sound less like ignorable nagging, and more like sensible precautions. My casual presumption that I will always be able to continue my current laissez-faire attitude toward what I do and how I do it is now subject to attack. Gone are the days of last-minute anything--everything takes longer, requires more effort, and leaves me more tired than it should. And then, there are those losses that remind me every day that life does not go on forever; that, impossible as it seems right now, I have a finite stretch of time and am definitely on the downhill side of the mountain.

I certainly plan on a few more decades, but suddenly, I am realizing that that's nowhere near a guarantee. So. It's time to submit my poems, to write that novel, to finish all those projects that languish upstairs, and maybe, just maybe, say a few 'thank yous' along the way.

Invisible

"If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound?" If I return from a trip a day early, and no one knows I am here...hmmm. What could I do when no one knows I am available?

I am enjoying found time, a day when I should have been winging my way from Dallas to Little Rock to Baltimore and home. Instead, JC providentially noticed (as we approached the gate for our flight from Albuquerque to Dallas Tuesday afternoon) that a non-stop flight to Baltimore (where we'd left our car) was boarding. Although JC had business in Dallas and environs, I was faced with a flight to Dallas and a 4:45 AM wake-up call to make my Baltimore flight the next morning. I scrambled and managed to get a seat (in an exit row, no less) to Baltimore, and was home by 10 PM Tuesday night.

So what do you do when you are invisible? I've read magazines. I've done a little grocery shopping. I've puttered in the garden. I turned on the fountain. I'm thinking about getting some plants for my windowboxes. I'm thinking about some decorative ideas I happened upon during our trip. I'm uploading photos. What I'm NOT doing? Sorting through the accumulated mail.

Doing laundry. Answering phone calls. Paying bills. Cleaning. Except for the scattered kitty litter that Jake graciously distributed over the floor, the rug, and yes, even the coffee table. (I don't even want to think about that.) There will be enough time for all that when I rejoin my world tomorrow. For now, I am drifting, like the shadow I am allowed to be, if only for today. Invisible.

September 1

At last! As I write this, I am at long last sitting at the table in my 'garden' at our new house. It is lovely. We moved in early July, and between weather (horribly hot) and neighbors (who were having their patio redone--which meant a 4-week long parade of workmen and wheelbarrows trundling through my patio each morning) there has not been a quiet morning to carry my tea and my laptop outside and sit, listening to morning noises and making a few of my own clickety-clicks on the keyboard.

Today is all clear blue sky and cool breezes. While I have yet to figure out exactly what the patio will look like (there ARE no planting beds to speak of, so container gardening is all I will be able to do, unless I enlist my own parade of workmen to alter this brick box...) I have a fountain and several large pots of green things and flowers, three trellises, a bench and some chairs and a table. Also a few sturdy weeds popping out from between the bricks, but what are weeds if not reminders that there is no such thing as perfect?

I do have visions, just as I have for the house. Some of those have been put in place, others will wait for a while, percolating until their outlines solidify. For now, I am happy with some quiet time in a friendly place without interruption: my garden.

Evidence of Life

The brick box they called a garden

is coming into focus now.

The weed-packed concrete boxes

that crown the wall

will have to come down.

Planted with lavender or rosemary

like spokes around the wheel

of the fountain’s base,

they will anchor a garden

of herbs and annuals,

an oasis of green in that brick desert.

My geraniums already blaze

on the table and in pots

on the trellises that flank my bench.

Purple petunias explode

from the urns in the corner,

and holly bushes guard the gate.

My lamb curls up behind the impatiens

and bunnies hide amid the leaves.

The stone garden god waits on the chair

for his throne to be established,

and for the first time since we arrived,

today

I see a bumblebee.

ISO: Writing discipline

I'm not writing poems anymore. Maybe it's the past three years of producing them for any and all occasions. Maybe it is that I've not had a lot of free time to think about things in the particular way poetry demands. Perhaps it is simply that there has been no real demand now that I'm out of office, but...my poem production has dwindled to a low ebb. Even my other writing has been curtailed, for unknown reasons. I find myself with my writing group gathering looming, and I have nothing to take with me. This is unprecedented.

Maybe this is writer's block, but I don't think so. I have noticed things and thought, "Hmmm. I could do something with that.." only to get distracted by some other quotidian concern--like what to make for dinner, or whether I should do the laundry today or tomorrow morning. I think I am at one of those places where I have to impose some discipline upon myself in order to produce something, anything that is worthy of reading. (Blogs, status updates, and emails do NOT count.)

But for now, I need to get something for dinner, check on the laundry....and think really hard about something to commit to paper. Today.

Moving forward..

I've been writing about real estate and home ownership for far too long, but--unfortunately--that has been my life for the past few months. Hard to believe that 6 months ago, we hadn't even thought about moving...Obviously, life can turn on a dime.

Interestingly, the whole moving process has unearthed a number of ideas, themes, launching pads for new writings. As I file random papers, I come across the collected Christmas letters for the past twenty-five years. Reading them is a revelation of where we've been and what we've accomplished: a verbal photo album that begs for consideration. Every issue we encounter in the new house turns up memories of previous experiences. Boxes that have lived in storage for nearly ten years, unexamined and forgotten, yield unexpected treasures and equally unexpected associations: vintage linens from JC's grandmother, our daughters' baby clothes, a crumbling wedding veil from JC's mother, dolls and toys that might again get some play-time with Audrey...and pictures and paintings and prints and maps and mirrors--all with stories to tell.

And along with all this comes the question: who will tell all these tales? Who will remember that this quilt came from the old dresser in the hall in Rogersville and was appliqued by JC's grandmother? That this veil is the one in his mother's wedding portrait? Who will recollect the wild Christmas Eve dash to Toys 'R Us to elbow through the crowds and stand in the interminable line to buy the Cabbage Patch kid that had been ordered months before? Who will know that it was this impossibly small dress that disappeared up the steps of that immense schoolbus on the day Kay started kindergarten? Who will identify the aunts and uncles and cousins, unrecognizable in their baby portraits, their youthful snapshots?

Moving to a new house is a step toward the future, of course; there are new places, new people, new adventures in store. But, just as much, it is also a trip backward, a plow cutting through our lives, turning them upside down, revealing all the hidden pieces, and making way for new and fruitful seasons.