MEMORIAL DAY

[In four days the United States celebrates Memorial Day. You can read about Memorial Day on many websites: how it came into being, and where--lots of conflicting stories about its conception. Today I want to share with you a poem by Michael Anania, American poet.]

MEMORIAL DAY

It is easily forgotten, year to

year, exactly where the plot is,

though the place is entirely familiar—

a willow tree by a curving roadway

sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;

 

damp grass strewn with flower boxes,

canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies

circling in draped black crepe family stones,

fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored

nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;

 

such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down

on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair

brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,

birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,

a stream opening at its foot.

 

We know the stories that are told,

by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy

regarding the precise enactments of their own

gesturing. And among the women there will be

a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.

 

The morning may be brilliant; the season

is one of brilliances—sunlight through

the fountained willow behind us, its splayed

shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,

irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.

 

It may be that since our walk there is faltering,

moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,

bluebells and zebragrass toward that place

between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way

is lost, that we have no practiced step there,

and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.

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Michael Anania was born in Omaha, NE in 1939.

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It was called Decoration Day when I was a little girl. We gathered wild iris and tiger lilies from the ditches that bordered the fields where corn was just beginning to thrust its green shoots through the black Illinois soil. We carried the flowers in quart jars of water to the cemetery where we decorated two small graves of my brothers. I didn't know what it was all about. But I felt the atmosphere of loss and mourning.

Now I know it as a day of remembering the ones who have left us--the Episcopal burial service says it beautifully: "Father of all, we pray to you . . . for all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant to them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May . . . the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."

 

EVER HAD A BORING DAY?

[Lately, my life has been one long stream of medical appointments, tests, clinic visits, check-ups, and the good old Etc. I'm having no real big problems, just the, you know, the Aging Thing. And as we do the Aging Thing, somebody somewhere mutters, "hmmm," and next thing you know, there's a new prescription or another test, or an appointment in X number of weeks to check up on that "hmmm." So all those interruptions to Life As I Know It make it hard to get new thoughts rounded up and whipped into shape for a blog post. So, dear friends, herewith a rerun about what to do with a boring day. And just so you know, I would dearly love to have one right now!]

 Please don't roll your eyes and mutter, "Duh," under your breath. Believe it or not, some people never have a boring day.

I'm not one of them. I've had boring days. Just so you know I'm speaking from experience here.

First, I think we better have some parameters--there are different kinds of boring days:

--Nothing's Happening - no plans, no possibility of activity, nobody coming to visit, etc.

--Nothing Creative Going On - the day offers no opportunity to hammer, saw, paint, plant, write, sew, so on

--Same Old/Same Old - Nothing new going on; just a repeat of the day before and the day before that and . . . hard to know the name of the day or the date on the calendar.

Okay. So far, so good.

Next, what are our resources?

--phone

--Internet

--transportation (car, boat, plane, scooter) for getting out and about

--paper and pencil/pen for writing notes/letters/whatevers

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There's been no formal survey yet, so far as I know, but I can speak from experience here that there's a sure-fire way to keep from getting bored. Are you ready for this?

            MAKE PLANS

Take my yesterday (puleeze!)--had my usual Wednesday list, not too full of chores, just an errand or two and an extra-curricular thing (baking scones) that I wanted to do.

First hop out of the box--text from a friend (sent the evening before while I was in bed) wanting to stop by for a few minutes in the morning for a short chat. I replied, sure, come ahead. 

After she left--first thing on my list, go to the pharmacy to pick up refills. Got there, drive-thru lane was closed, had to go inside (picked up a couple of things I could've done without but since I was there.....); waited in line at the pharmacy behind people getting COVID vaccines (I'm very bad at waiting in line); one woman told me to go ahead inside the curtain--she and her kids were all done, just in the 15-minute waiting period before they could leave. Finally left the store with my refills and  three little items I paid for in the self-checkout lane. 

My mid-morning coffee, still in the coffeemaker, was sitting on the kitchen counter getting stale by the time I got home. I drank it anyway and tried to dredge up a scintillating topic for today's blog post . . . came up with what to do to avoid a boring day. Or, maybe, rearrange one.

(What I actually did was play online solitaire for a while to get my brain calmed down, then started typing.)

The rest of the day probably was going as planned--make the scones, do dishes, have lunch, take a nap, read . . . the normal day, after all. Not boring, but not jumbled either. Just a little jangled after the earlier morning's unplanned activities.

Apparently, if I'd had no plans for the day, everything would have been spontaneous. But since I was foolish enough to make plans ahead of time, I had nothing but interruptions. The upside, if there is one, is that I didn't have time to get bored. Just jangled.

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What to do with a boring day? Pretty much depends on your personality. If you absolutely can't stand doing nothing--or doing only the mundane chores you face every day--you'll likely call somebody, or get on your scooter--or, in your car/boat/plane--and tool around visiting people and places to give your eyes and mind something to feast on besides the inside of your house, head, and life.

If you're one of those people who can stand a lot of nothing, but feel adventurous, you might read a book that takes you out of your everyday--or escape into the world of a video--or surf the 'web for places to visit that you might never get to see in the flesh.

Writing a letter to a friend or relative can also get the creative juices going; I mean, who tells the whole truth about life in a letter? Lots of license there for making it all sound better--or worse--than it was.

If you're really, really desperate, you can eat a big bag of chips and a quart of fudgy salted caramel ice cream, with nuts. (Doubt that you'll be bored the next day.)

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Wishing you happy days--stimulating days--quiet days, if you need them--and once in a while, just for contrast and to help you appreciate the other kinds, once in a while a boring day.

  LEARNED AT MY MOTHER'S KNEE

[I'm repeating this post for Mother's Day. My mother has been gone for 67 years now, but my, how she lives on in my memories! This is one of my posts that celebrates her

life and influence.]

What did you learn at your mother's knee?

One thing I learned was how to swear. Fluently.

My mother had four older brothers and three older sisters. No matter how vigilant Grandma and Grandpa were, older siblings will be older siblings. I suspect the boys were the more accomplished swearers, though.

And it didn't take me long to learn where and when swearing was tolerated--not many places and not often.

But the best thing I learned from my mom was how to be a Positive Person.

Not a family pic--but this is how women
looked in the 1940s.

I knew all six of the Jenkins girls: Dessie, Grace, Sarah, Mom (Doris), Dorothy (Mom's twin), Virginia. It was a rare moment when all six happened to be together, so I got to know them in smaller groups when they met at Grandma's house to can green beans or help clean house or just because they wanted to visit and Grandma's house was central for most of them.

Picture this: Grandma sitting at her big round kitchen table, waited on by whichever daughters showed up. A pie is cut and served. The coffee pot is never allowed to go dry. Voices mix and mingle and soar. The decibel level rises to ever greater heights.

What did they talk about? Everything. And I learned a lot from the corner where I sat and listened (they thought I was reading--well, I was, but I was listening, too). What I learned was this: There was nothing too big or too personal or too sad or too upsetting that it couldn't be laid on the table, commented on, hashed out, maybe even solved.

These women faced the problems in their lives.

They acknowledged the problems.

They shared them with each other.

Then they got on with life.

And always, they laughed. By the end of the pie and coffee and the afternoon, someone's burden was lighter.

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When I think about my mother and her sisters, I realize they taught me many useful approaches to life. Such as:

-- Stand up to adversity.

-- Share your burden.

-- Laugh if you can.

-- Cry if you can't laugh.

-- Be honest; don't say it's worse than it is; don't lie; give the benefit of the doubt, if you can.

-- Walk away, if you have to (though I don't remember much of that, not permanent leaving).

-- Apologize if necessary.

-- And a very practical lesson: Clean the house--it's great for anger management. (Not to mention you'll have a cleaner house.)

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As you can imagine, the above lessons were the ones I caught by example. No one gave me instructions or a list called How to Live as an Adult. I suspect most of us learn by the examples we were given.

Which makes me wonder what my children would write, if they were asked what they learned at their mother's knee. I grow faint just thinking about it.

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Whether or not you have children, you were once a child yourself, so you had a mother. If she's still on this planet, wish her a happy day, and thank her, if you can, for what you learned from her example. If she has passed on to another place, salute her for the lessons she gave you.

Mine showed me how to be positive, even when life gives you lemons and you don't have a pitcher or enough sugar to make lemonade. Her smile, even when she was dying of cancer, was genuine; she wasn't trying to deny death. She was still saying "yes!" to life.

 POETRY

Do you know WENDELL BERRY? Here's what the Poetry Foundation says about him:

Poet, novelist, and environmentalist Wendell Berry lives in Port Royal, Kentucky near his birthplace, where he has maintained a farm for over 40 years. Mistrustful of technology, he holds deep reverence for the land and is a staunch defender of agrarian values. He is the author of over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and essays. His poetry celebrates the holiness of life and everyday miracles often taken for granted.

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Here's a sample of Berry's poetry, called "The Peace of Wild Things":

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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Here's another one, which he calls "A Warning to My Readers":

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

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And finally, one he calls "The Real Work":

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

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There you have it--an introduction to American poet Wendell Berry. If you look him up online, you'll find many of his poems, as well as more biographical notes. In a library, you may find several of his 50 books of poetry!

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Wishing you blessed days as we go forward!

Thursday's Child