LAST DAYS OF SUMMER

Did you do everything you wanted to do in Summer 2020? Well, of course you didn't, because of the COVID-19 restrictions. But, given that limitation, did you have a summer? Because if you didn't, you have only 5 more days before Autumn 2020 shows up. 

We all know the first days of Autumn can be hot and humid and sometimes rainy. Kids start out the day in shorts and by evening they may be wishing they had long pants on. Or vice versa. 

This is an unpredictable "season" in an unpredictable world. 

We've investigated transitions many times over the years that Thursday's Child has been coming to you. We make a transition each time we change our status--from single to married; from student to graduate; from one job to another job; and currently, from a job to a jobless state. I know it's a cliche, but transitions, which are another concept for change, are what life is all about.

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In the last days of my summer season, I've had the house open--all windows and screen doors letting in fresh air. Fortunately there was no strong breeze to whisk dust inside (we already have enough of that). 

My daughter and I had our supper on the patio--roasted chicken and root vegetables, with a side of sliced fresh tomatoes (drizzled with balsamic vinegar and garnished with fresh basil), courtesy of a friend's mother's garden. While we ate we were serenaded by a lawn service cutting grass across the alley, but he finally finished up and we had the natural world's tunes: cicadas, a couple of crickets, and neighborhood dogs. Not loud, not intrusive.

Some days we have the air conditioning running to keep the humidity down. Other times, mostly nights, we have the heat thermostat set at 68 to keep the overnight chill (some nights in the 40s already) from nipping our noses.

One thing for sure: We can't get bored--keeping track of the temperature and other weather stuff is ongoing and sometimes changes hour by hour.

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Now that Autumn is at hand, the grass is lush and green, though not growing as fast as it did a few weeks ago. The maples in the back yard are starting to lose their leaves, and have offered a handful with a lot of color. Both trees are in need of trimming, which means there's a bumper crop of leaves up there waiting for the rakes and leaf blowers.

The grocery ads are gearing up for autumnal delicacies. Soon we'll be carving pumpkins, or cooking them, or possibly purchasing them in cans, or even--hate to say it--buying our desserts already prepared. Apples are begging to be made into pies and cakes and crisps and sauce. Peaches and nectarines are on special this week. And one ad had mandarin oranges (in September!); they're my go-to fruit, along with apples, in the winter.

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I hope you've had some summer fun this year--that you had the opportunity to make memories (and they'll be really different this time!)--and that you found ways to enjoy your life and your family. It may not have been the Kodachrome summer you wanted, but I doubt if any of us will forget it soon.

Autumn is ready for us, even if we can't look forward to the festivals and corn mazes and other entertainments we've enjoyed in past years. We'll have another season to make our own fun.

As fast as this year is slipping away, we'll soon be wearing warm boots and heavy coats, and blowing or shoveling the white stuff. But not yet! Not yet! First, let's say good-bye to Summer and welcome Autumn in her colorful garb.

Have a blessed week!

3 A.M. WISDOM

"In the wee, small hours of the morning,
when the whole wide world is fast asleep,
You lie awake and think................"

There's something about those wee, small hours that teases our brains into thoughts that seem so wise, so obvious, so absolutely right . . . how could we not remember them? Act on them? Take them as signs?

My recent wee-small wisdoms concerned Memory. 

Popular wisdom accepts memory loss as something that just happens. Every family has anecdotes about what happened when Great Aunt Ethel lost her memory. (It's not talked about nowadays.) Or when Grandpa Harold wandered around town and the family had to call the police to find him.

Hardly anyone ever mentions that young folks also have their memory lapses. Young Jimmy next door pulled a Grandpa Harold and wandered off and nobody thought anything about it, though I heard the kid had a painful experience sitting on wooden chairs for a few days. Then there was the time Cousin Clementine eloped and forgot her luggage. She wasn't elderly, but she was no spring chicken, either, at 45.

Those explanations and accepted "proofs" of memory loss don't stack up for me. So I offer another view of the subject.

So let's suppose--just suppose--memory operates on a "needs to know" basis. 

Here's an example: If I'm not going to use my car keys today, do I need to remember where they are? Not really. They'll still be there (wherever there is) the next time I plan to go to the store and need to drive myself.

Here's another one: Why would I need to remember how to make chicken croquettes, unless I'm planning to serve them? Or, perhaps, teach someone else how to make them? 

In the Big Scheme of Things, there's a whole 26-volume set of encyclopedias' worth of knowledge that I don't have to remember, just in case somebody wants to know. (Ever heard of Google?)

Like most people, I have a short list of Things I Need to Remember, such as:

--where the unpaid bills are located
--whether I've eaten, taken my pills, and checked the mail
--what sounds emitted by the refrigerator, washer/dryer, and vehicle are normal

(There are more, but right now, that's all I need to remember.)

Does that mean I'm too old to live alone? Do I need a minder? Am I safe to drive, use the telephone and Internet, take my pills without supervision?

It means I'm following my motto of remembering what I need to know.

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Let's flip that coin over--one side is "Remember," and the other side is "Forget."

Is it ever okay to forget things? Sure, why not? If you and I try to remember every absolutely-bloomin' thing, how will we get through a day? 

It's also called "Taking Things for Granted." Think about it--do we have to remember to get up in the morning? Eat once in a while? Nap if we feel tired? Go to bed when it's dark (that's if you aren't on a different shift)? Do we have to remember that the sun comes up in the morning, and goes down at night? (Never mind the science lesson--we've done that one before.)

There's also "Living in a Different Reality": Most of us remember to put on regular clothes before we go outside, but a few will wear what passes for pajamas anywhere and everywhere. (If you don't believe me, just go to the mall or Walmart or the grocery store and people-watch. See?) Do they get arrested? Is there a line of people pointing fingers and tittering? Not likely. They didn't forget. Their reality is different from mine.

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The next time you're awake at 3:00 A.M., rummage around in your mental attic and see what pops out. You may surprise yourself. You may have a good time with memories that have run off and hidden themselves because you didn't have time for them during the day. 

If you forget them the next day--that's okay, they don't have to hang around. It's all in the "need to know" basis. Remember?

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Have a blessed week! (Just a reminder..........)

CHANGE

[We've been dealing with major changes in our lives--daily, future--so I resurrected this post to give us some positive thoughts. Then I devised a new ending to conform to current times.]

You can always tell when the season is shifting, because I blog about transitions and change. Here’s the latest batch—they’re all visuals because I found the messages encouraging.

 C. S. Lewis, known to many as the creator of The Chronicles of Narnia, became a Christian late in life and wrote many books about faith.

Maya Angelou is known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, as well as for many volumes of poetry.

Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic.

My  story--my life--is in my hands. Staggering thought, isn't it?

Just one early morning gratitude--mumbled while your eyes are trying to open, before the morning jolt of caffeine, before your feet hit the floor--just one expression of thankfulness can make a difference in how your day starts, continues, and ends.

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Change has shaken the world as we knew it--businesses have closed, some never to reopen; people we know have lost jobs or have trouble finding new ones; schools may be open but everyone is wearing a mask, or sitting far from friends in a normally filled classroom, now half-empty; teachers have two levels of teaching--in-person and virtually. Shopping may be normal, and then again, it may be a disaster, with empty shelves announcing that some of our favorite or much-needed products aren't available.

And yet--somehow we soldier on. We learn to substitute where we can. We find new ways to do old tasks that had grown mindless because we took the old ways for granted. We still rant and rail against change--maybe that's part of our DNA--but we know we're not the only ones going without.

Since change is inevitable, you--and I--might as well try to embrace it. We won't like it, probably, and maybe that's a good thing--if we have to try to come up with a solution to a problem that used to be solved for us, like how to bake a cake without eggs or sugar when there's no cake mix on the shelves, then we exercise our brains. You don't have to reinvent the wheel--just find the guy who made it in the first place. Talk to somebody--have you made a cake without eggs and sugar? How did you do it? Was it any good?

Maybe that's the best solution of all--talk to somebody! Hearing a voice can lift spirits faster than a shot of helium.

Have a wonderful week!

ALPHABET SOUP

When my kids were in elementary school we often had soup for lunch. That's if we lived close enough for them to come home for their midday meal.


Our old standby was Cream of Tomato Soup, served with a toasted cheese sandwich. Warm, filling, yummy.

I tried other flavors of soup--some, as you might expect, went over better than others. Bean and Bacon was tasty. Chicken and Rice was merely okay. Beef and Vegetable was acceptable.

A fun meal was Alphabet Soup, so-called because the little bits of pasta were in the shapes of letters of the alphabet. I always thought that was a clever way to get kids to eat as well as help them identify their letters.

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In college-level history classes I learned that Alphabet Soup had a totally different meaning: it was a handy way to refer to all the government acronyms (and other references) that had emerged during the 20th Century. I recognized WPA and CCC from the 1930s (read about those--wasn't born yet); AWOL, WAC, WAF, GI, SNAFU from the 40s when I got old enough to know some of my cousins who'd been in the military; then, when I became aware of political stuff, there was FDR, and later on JFK and others.

This shorthand way of speaking had been around for quite some time. And it's still with us.

Fast-forward to the late 20th Century and the advent of Internet. Once we got into the swing of email, we had a whole new way to communicate:

LOL - laughing out loud
TTYL - talk to you later
TTYS - talk to you soon
BTW - by the way

Soon folks were talking about WIPs and UFOs. I wasn't sure about the WIPs, but I knew about UFO's--they'd been all the talk in the 40s and 50s, along with crop circles and movies about aliens invading Earth.

How wrong I was! UFOs, folks, are UnFinished Objects.

WIPs, used in many circles, meant Works in Progress; or if you were in accounting, Works in Process.

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I asked my oldest daughter, who has made quilts for many years, to share her treasury of alphabet soup. Besides WIPs and UFOs, here are some I especially like:

BDNQ: Bad Day, Not Quilting

HIPS: Hundreds of Ideas Piling Skyward

HSY: Haven't Started Yet

PIGS: Projects in Grocery Sacks

SABLE: Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy

TGIF: Thank God It's Finished

WOMBAT: Waste of Money, Batting, and Time

WIWMI: Wish It Would Make Itself

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BDNQ could easily be adapted to anything: Bad Day, Not Reading (BDNR); or Bad Day, Not Napping (BDNN); or maybe Bad Day, Not Shopping (BDNS).

On second thought, I'll not use that one--don't like to call any day a "bad" day. Gotta be a silver lining somewhere.

No doubt you've developed some of your own Alphabet Soup to use in emails or snail mails or messages on the family white board.

Until next time, TTYL, keep LOL, and BTW, have a blessed week!

PATIENCE!

Practically everyone has heard the ironic prayer: "Lord, give me patience, and right now!"

The importance of patience in our lives isn't easily defined--isn't easily obtained--and certainly isn't going to appear by a genie floating out of a bottle with a cloud of Patience to wrap us in.

Patience--like many other good and desirable characteristics--begins at home.

My daughter shared her thoughts on Patience: There's an element we call letting go--of preconceived ideas about what should happen, of timelines that suit us.

Most of all--we need to avoid the trap of thinking lack of success is somehow our own fault. It may be, that's true. But it may not. 

It all boils down to trust--things will happen when they happen. Many factors are out of our control. What seems simple to us may involve countless people between us and success. . . unknown hoops to jump through . . . procedures no one told us about.

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So! Perhaps Patience is not only hard-won but serves a purpose beyond the immediate attainment of a goal--Patience is a lesson to be learned. And if we accept Helen Keller's belief, the only way to learn Patience is through non-joyful events and circumstances.

I can't say I'm thrilled to suffer, even in a minor way, in order to learn Patience. But if I can accept that premise, then I know I'm in good company, for everyone is learning along with me.

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Hal Borland wrote many essays and books about nature. He lived among trees and mountains and gardens. He observed life through the lens of nature. And he shared his insights into human life by exploring and explaining life in the natural world.

People who live close to the land, like farmers, or who find joy in gardening and landscaping, know that Patience is a standard requirement if the end result, the harvest, is going to happen. 

Patience, along with persistence, is what accompanies the carpenter who builds a house, the sewist who embarks on a year-long project to make a quilt, the student who works year by year toward graduation; or the artist who brings a scene to life, the writer who tells the story of real people or fictional characters, the musician who practices for hours (perhaps for years) for one performance.

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My own understanding of Patience has come with age and aging. In my youth I was eager to get on, go higher and farther, not spend too much time in any one place or time. Keep going! More often than not, I got in my own way. 

Having children was a full-on lesson in Patience--every day, practically every hour, Patience was required. (Sadly, I wasn't very good at that lesson. Took a long time to cultivate a sense of letting go of unrealistic expectations.)

In an odd way, our current pandemic has increased my sense of Letting Go and biding my time. I can't make a difference in the curing of the virus. But I can look for ways to be safe and keep other people safe. Yes, I mourn the loss of freedoms we had--such as going to church, worshiping in person, receiving communion. But my life has slowed down and not only do I smell the roses, I see sunsets and meteor showers and planets that don't often come our way. 

Have a blessed week! And may Patience be yours.

AUGUST. . .

August is well and truly with us. The eighth month of the year, middle month of the summer season. A time of picnics, final vacation trips before school starts, gearing up for a new school year with fresh-bought gym shoes, backpacks, shorts-and-tees, and whatever supplies the school decrees are required for the coming year's attractions.

Except--not this year.

Schools have started in my geographical area--some last week, some this week. 


Attendance is (1) at school, in person, wearing a mask; or (2) at home, in front of a computer, for e-learning provided by the school district; or (3) at home, provided (usually) by parent(s) of the student; or (4) perhaps in a multi-family pod that creates a small school feeling.

Online classes at colleges and universities have become the new norm, not an option. 

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My friend's daughter, a second-year college student going for a nursing degree, has made a tentative peace with online studies for some of her courses. Her travel to the campus is reduced from four or five days to two, thus saving her money on fuel.

Some students don't have the option to remain at home; in some schools, athletes have to attend classes in person if they want to continue in their sports.

Bands and choirs are mostly discontinued in my area. 

Schools are limiting attendance at athletics events to two tickets per athlete. This allows for social distancing in the bleachers.

No, it's not what we expect when we talk about a new school year starting.


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August is also the month that heralds Labor Day--in my community, that's the time for classic car buffs to gather for food, auctions, and various types of hoop-la and fun. That's been cancelled also.

Looking ahead, the county fair is also off the calendar.

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I'm trying to come up with a positive outlook here. Not that we want these events and formerly well-established activities to be gone for good. That's not positive.

But, when something's gone, we do have to deal with that as a fact. It may come back another year, yes. And, it may not.

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Here are some suggestions for silver linings:

--we're being given the opportunity to make our own fun. Won't be the same, goes without saying. Can still be fun. For those of us who were around in the pre-electronic period, there were only home grown activities. Home movies were made and shown. Kids wrote their own plays and produced them. Older kids learned what is now called a trade--woodworking, sewing, quilt making, cooking and baking. Folks visited with each other--wrote letters and sent cards--took drives in the countryside to see the crops, other people's flower gardens, or buy veggies at roadside stands.

--less travel to school or job means a savings on fuel, as my friend's daughter quickly realized. In a time when money may be scarce, that savings can be valuable.

--we're also finding we can grow our own food (lots of folks have had gardens all their lives); even if we don't can and freeze the produce for next winter, we'll enjoy fresh vegetables and fruits from our own plants and bushes and trees.

--if we need to make space for others to live with us, we can finally go through all those boxes of stuff that have accumulated in the spare room. Old pictures? Share them with the grandchildren so they'll know what their parents looked like as youngsters. (One of my grandsons said looking at his grandfather's photo was like looking in a mirror.)

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August may not be what you hoped it would be, or expected it to look like. But we can still experience summertime. The grass is brown until we get a few more rains. Mowing is down to every ten days. The outdoor plants need watering nearly every day. Bird feeders need filling often. And when there's a nice breeze, we can sit outside and enjoy it.

I see a few big yellow school buses making their rounds. And I see kids in my neighborhood riding bikes or walking to the bus stop.

In ten years, or twenty, new adults will be telling their children and possibly grandchildren all about the years when so much of life was shut down and we had to make our own fun, had to rely on each other in different ways, learned a lot about staying alive and healthy in a time of uncertainty and stress. 

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Have a blessed week! Stay safe . . . help others . . . give thanks.

Always arriving in early August

MEMORIES, AND SHARING THEM

[My local library is open again, after a 3-year major renovation following an arson fire in 2017. This re-opening is probably THE major event of a year that is going down in history as a year that mostly didn't happen. So I'm repeating a post about library books because I (1) love books, (2) love libraries, and (3) believe we ought to share our passions with each other. AND, as a bonus, you'll find something to fill in your own unscheduled hours.]

Biography section is a convenient umbrella that includes autobiography and memoir. I love memoir. Memoir is a way of living part of another person’s life and understanding not only what happened, but one view of why it happened, and how it has impacted the writer’s life.

Looking at my home-grown library, collected over the past fifty-plus years, I find a large number of non-fiction books that are based on memories and recollected stories: All of May Sarton’s journals; the James Herriott animal stories from his veterinary practice in Yorkshire; Russell Baker’s Growing Up, about his youth in the 1930s; C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. . . .

The list is endless. There’s even a category on Amazon.com called “100 Biographies and Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime.” Here are a few you might recognize:

A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt

Anne Frank’s Diary

Seabiscuit and Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand

The Story of My Life, Helen Keller

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen

Night, Elie Weisel

As you can tell by the variety in the above list, there’s no one way to write a memoir. Bill Bryson’s is a humorous tale of outdoor life. Hemingway writes of the explosive political times in the 1920s and 1930s. Frank McCourt tells of an Irish childhood lived in poverty. Anne Frank’s diary recounts her family’s hiding from the Nazis in World War II. Helen Keller writes about her life as a multi-handicapped child.

Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit brought the 1930s horse scene to life; her Unbroken, a World War II survivorship story, was painful to read, but remains one of my favorite books about the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness.

The late Maya Angelou was a poet, but her memoir helped her rise above an abusive childhood as an African-American girl.

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa became a lovely movie, based on the Danish woman's various writings—her stories, letters, and articles.

Elie Weisel’s Night is book one of a trilogy in which he ponders serious questions that arise for a survivor of the Holocaust.

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There you have a starter list of books to look for, if you want to experience someone else’s life, culture, and time frame.

Now for the big question—Have you ever thought about writing a memoir of your own?

(Don’t make ugly faces; you haven’t heard the rest of the idea.)

If you’ve managed to live through childhood, marriage/career, children (your own or someone else’s), you have a built-in audience. For example: Do your children know where you grew up? What it was like to live on a farm, in a big city, on a river, in the mountains, in another country? Do your children know their grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins? Did your great-grandfather fight in the War Between the States? (Mine did.)

There’s more to Life than kids’ll learn in a museum. Why not tell them your story? Write about the time you won a blue ribbon for your prize animal/plant/project at the 4-H Fair. Never won one? Write about not winning. Who did win? How did that feel? Did it makes you try harder? Or give up?

What did you do for fun before technology came along and gave us hand-held games, computers, and videos? What was a treat in your family? How did you celebrate birthdays (if you did)?

My family never travelled much for vacations. In fact, vacations times were when we "got caught up on things around the place.” (Maybe that’s why I was never a fan of summer vacation once I went to school.) If you were one of the families that went to Grand Canyon, Grand Ol’ Opry, Epcot Center, camping in the wilds of Montana . . . wherever . . . write about it! Make it come alive.

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Okay, you don’t like the idea of writing about yourself. Just remember—no Memoir Police are going to come along with a red pencil and mark your comma splices or circle a misspelled word. This is not for publication, except for whoever you share it with.

What about--speaking your stories into a little hand-held tape recorder? Anyone who wants to read a paper copy can transcribe them.

OR--I like this one a lot--gather the little guys around (everybody has little guys in the family) and tell them stories of what life was like when you were their ages. (BTW, "guys" includes girls, too. I loved hearing stories about when my mom and dad were kids, and also my grandparents, whenever I could get them to talk about the old days.)

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So--here’s another take on the subject of Memoir.

Do you know folks who live in nursing homes, retirement communities, assisted living, or other such types of housing, who may have stories to tell?

I used to walk at the Y with a man twenty years older than I, who hadn’t grown up in our town, but had moved here as a young man and become acquainted with—to hear him tell it—practically everybody over the age of ten. Wow, did he have stories to tell! And his memory was prodigious. He collected stories the way I collect books. I wanted him to go to the genealogy center here in town to record some of his stories (I knew he’d never write them down), but he hasn’t done it yet. He now resides in assisted living locally and continues to get out and about if someone drive him.

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There are many, many books in print, along with helpful websites, that tell how to write a memoir. But you don’t need to read those yet. Just get a spiral notebook, a good pen, and put on your smile. Sit down in a comfortable place, and let the memories roll.

If you're writing someone else's story, let that person decide if the story is to be shared.

if you’re writing your own story, don’t share it till you’re ready. And if you’re never ready? Hey, that’s okay, too.

Keep in mind that you may not have been old enough to remember some world-wide things going on in your or your subject's early life—such as The Great Depression, World War II, or the Korean Conflict, or the Beatles’ invasion of the U.S. So, do some research. That’s what Google is for! You’ll be glad for the details to make these remembrances live for the reader. And details provide a context for what you or someone else can remember about family, work, or school.

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Kodak has us already in the mindset of “making” memories.

How about putting a few of them on paper? Or tape? Or telling them to young folks?