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Snippets/Travel

ACROSS the AISLE there is a lady nicely bejeweled – a watch, 2 rings, several bracelets, simple necklace and earrings.

I’m wearing what I always wear, 2 gold bands (one on my pinkie whose history I do not know). I feel for a necklace. Nope, not today. None. Why do we do this, make comparisons? Oy.

She must be one of those people I hear tell of who dress for appearance rather than speed going through airport Security. We all have our guiding stars.

* * *

I GOT PATTED DOWN again, this time just my left arm, but still. I’m WAY over quota.

* * *

IN the WAITING AREA, there was a lookalike for someone I know well, but I know it’s not him, so this is maybe the one and only time in my life I don’t strike up a conversation thinking I’m talking to one person when really it’s another. There are a few towns in the US where I am considered a very friendly, outgoing person…when really it’s just that I think I see someone I know and go right up and start jabbering and asking after the family before I realize I’ve got it wrong. But by then the person believes we really are acquainted. And, now we are. Talk about building networks!

Anyway, I survive Security, I don’t talk to the lookalike and I stop comparing myself to the 86-yr-old woman across the aisle who knows how to carry it off, the jeweled look.

I read “Enchanted April” in the author’s own words and chuckle for the first time in a long time. I mean, for real chuckling. Spontaneous. Authentic (but sensibly muffled, of course).

Download FREE a Kindle version of Elizabeth Von Amim’s “The Enchanted April.“

Next thing I know, we’ve left the rain behind and risen above the clouds.

This is a momentous day, but like all the momentous days of my life, the momentousness doesn’t hit me. I’m too busy processing details. The sense of momentousness lags behind. It’ll catch up, though. It will. It will all of a sudden. Like the chuckling.
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Freddie Dies

FREDDIE dies.
Anchor to the whole neighborhood.
First house on the street before there were streets.
Freddie, the keeper of the history. Who will keep it now?

Freddie, #5 in my Gratitude Journal. He and Ginny.

Nine years I’m in this house. He was in his since the beginning of time, or at least time out here.

There was once a quarry
and a dirt road for trucks going to and from it.
And there was his house.
I wasn’t even born yet.

He and Ginny saw cornfields cleared piecemeal as houses went up, one by one. They saw families come and go, kids grow. They saw saplings turn into giants, giants removed and new saplings come as replacements. They were witnesses.

They told us the history of our property, how it was once forest-like and the house tucked back in there, dark. One of the owners had 35 trees removed. Was that 3 owners ago? Four? We tried to work it out a few times. Nobody could say for sure.

* * *

SEVERAL summers sitting, I talked about the screen room I dreamed of for the back of our house.

“That would be nice,” he said. “I can picture it.”

But by the time we finally did it, he couldn’t see that far and was already starting to spend more time at the rehab facility than his own house. And then they both went to assisted living.

* * *

SHE WAS NOT YET 18 when the far reaches of the county were beginning to get electricity and he delivered a refrigerator to her family’s home way up Rt. 7. That’s how it all started for them. And then a war and kids and sickness and health and plain old trying to make a life.

I came in at the end of the book and was brought up to speed, which was by then quite slow, but so was I.

It’s been quiet over there a long time now. And the porch swing that was hung every year at the start of summer has missed a few turns.

Maybe another part of the fog lifting for me is a day to stop and consider the long view and get some perspective.

first house on the street

Freddie and Ginny’s house. View from my screen room.

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The Stirring When Fog Lifts

bridge disappeared in fog

Are you in a fog? It’s 9 months now for me.

ON MY DAY OFF, I bring my laptop to the screenporch to finish a letter. From here I’ll be able to see the repairman’s truck when he arrives. What’s the point of tucking myself away back in the far reaches of the house when I’m expecting someone, then running down the hallway every few minutes to see if he’s here?

The morning fog keeps me company and we are old friends.

I prefer a window seat when flying, to view ribbons of fog that lie in river valleys.

Since moving here by a river 18 years ago, though, I see fog from the other side, from underneath. It’s part of our (almost) daily existence, the fog rising most mornings and presenting itself to us for observation and study, then hurrying on. It is just part of our lives.

* * *

I COME TO THE PORCH to write. It’s warm and humid, even at 6:30 AM. I don’t need a sweater. Partway into my letter, though, I feel a sudden chill. Then another. I look up. The leaves that just a minute ago hung still in midair are moving. And the grass waves slightly.

It is always this way.

When the fog lifts, there is a stirring that seems to come from nowhere and go nowhere and yet, something big is happening. Reminds me of John 3:8.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

I try to tough it out, wait for the chill to pass, but in the end I go get the sweater. Sometimes it feels like we are in a wrestling match – me, to tough it out, and it, to keep making me uncomfortable until I do something about it.

Fog can be dangerous and scary. I don’t like to travel in it anymore than anyone else, but there is this other thing about it. There is this stirring that is not to be missed. It happens every time. The fog always eventually lifts, and I don’t like to miss that moment.

My fog, by the way, is lifting.

Belinda writes about fog today and her words prompted me. Thanks, Belinda.

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Every Year I Want to Go Back

1958

Some wild-haired child in front of my grandparents’ house, 1958.

EVERY YEAR it happens. The school bus stops appearing at the corner at 7 AM and kids are in the neighborhood all day long.

And every year I dream of going back to my Gram’s for a week like I did as a child.

So I reposted the links to posts about that on Twitter. Rereading them was a lot like going back. Maybe even better, for as Wordsworth wrote,

“…nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower…”*

My senior English teacher commented, “We all dream of going back and reliving a particular time, but everyone who’s had that chance knows, it isn’t the same as your memory has preserved it.” She talked to us like grown-ups and so we behaved as such, and thought and spoke as grown-ups within the four walls of her classroom. She had a real gift for teaching, or how else would I have recalled that all these years later?

Now, rereading my own memories, I smile and I do not do what I did as a child, droop sideways on the porch glider, bored, wondering when we’d eat next and what it might be.

Last night at the levee, I caught a whiff of pipe tobacco – briefly, faintly – and this alone was enough to carry me back. I do not wish to be that age again, but I do enjoy remembering.

Write a fond memory today! Maybe share it with someone. :-)

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*from “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Pat and Mike

Secret Ingredient

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Other People’s Dreams

bikes at rest
Yet another philosophical maelstrom. I’m sure to come to the end of them soon!

I give up chasing other people’s dreams
when I realize I’ve been doing it.

People make suggestions.
Sure. Sounds good.
I’ll give it a try.
Next thing I know I’m enslaved.
It’s running my life.

Do I regret
turning down her offer?
“You can use me as a reference
if you want to get on the circuit.
Just drop my name. People know me.”

Do I regret it,
turning inside-out
at the thought of the exposure
and saying,
“Thank you anyway, but I don’t think I’ll pursue that”?

Was that a mistake?
Hard to say.

But I remember
a few years ago
in a grocery-store chat,
someone dear and I
agreed:
We make the best decision we can
with the information we have
and thereafter let it go.

I think that’s right.

And I think the person
who offered the reference
saw my potential
to live her dream.

She shrugged and accepted it,
but didn’t understand.

And while I might have enjoyed it,
some parts anyway,
no, I don’t regret my decision.

* * *

image: “Bikes at Rest” by Marilyn….has absolutely nothing to do with this post. :-)

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Every Writer’s Dilemma: To Write Privately or Publicly?

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TWO WEEKS until the Retreat on Forgiveness and I need it.

I’m wondering what to do with all that’s happened and whether people like to read sad things. Or am I just another person dumping their stuff on the world?

I know I pushed the envelope a bit, writing some of my thoughts about growing up with an alcoholic parent, but each piece felt right and the collection brought mail from so many different places, I was glad I’d written. Not just written, but shared. Those are two different things.

But what about this current situation? Will I do anything with it? I mean, besides crumble into dust and be blown to the corners of life?

Will I write about it? (In truth, I have already. 120,000+ words)
Will I share any of it? Will I sift out the gems?

Not to be coy, but this is an important part of being a writer, discerning whether writing “out loud” (in the public eye) serves any purpose. I don’t take these decisions lightly.

There are things that belong in journals,
things that belong in private letters to individuals,
things that belong in a public space.
The wise writer knows the difference.

And though I may at the moment teeter on despair, crying endless hours, feeling the past was a waste and the future is absent, I’m hanging on to being a wise writer, or at least giving the appearance of one.

Two weeks until the retreat. I will gain something there, if only a break. You just never know.

Were Talking about it, Just Not One Day a Week

Were Talking about it, Just Not One Day a Week

How It Starts

How It Starts

Real Reason Most Journals are Abandoned

Real Reason Most Journals are Abandoned