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.

-----
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.)

-----
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.

-----
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.

-----

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.

-----

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.

-----

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.

-----

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!

 -----

Wishing you blessed days as we go forward!

Thursday's Child

 ATTITUDES & GRATITUDES

When I was young, long before I could drive a car, I rode with my parents. If we wanted to get somewhere quickly, we took what my dad called "hard roads"--meaning, the surface of the road was probably concrete, or maybe asphalt. We called it "the black top" because that's what it looked like.

If it didn't matter how long the trip took, or if the people we were going to visit lived 'way off from civilization (or so it seemed to  my young mind), we drove on gravel roads. These were supposedly maintained by the township where the roads were located. Sometimes they were.

I bring this up because whenever we found ourselves on the lesser improved roads, we often hit a rough place. Literally. The road might be deeply rutted, due to heavy rains followed by vehicles, trucks or wagons, that sank down in the mire. Somehow or other, we always got through.

Right now, I--along with any number of people--am going through a rough place. The way ahead is uncertain, though so far there's been no detour or sliding off the road into a water-filled ditch. Metaphorically speaking, you understand.

I don't recall my parents and I ever had a bad outcome to our jaunts. Somehow or other, we always came through--maybe a little muddy on the outside, or possibly with a flat tire out of the ordeal. Overall, though, not so bad. Maybe that's the genesis of my basically positive attitude--we always came through.

So today, in case you're in, or nearing, a rough place, I'm sharing some thoughts that may make the going a little easier.

First, Attitude:

• You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.( Brian Tracy)

• The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. (Aldous Huxley)

And now, Gratitude:

• Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. (Melody Beattie)
• As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. (John F. Kennedy)

I'll give Winston Churchill the last word:

Until next time,

Blessings

Thursday's Child

 

SPRING TONIC

In my grandmother’s day a good dose of blackstrap molasses and sulphur cleaned out the human system, warded off any lingering malaise from winter’s icy clutches, and tuned up the body for three seasons of hard work on the farm.

In my youth, the Spring Tonic on Grandma’s shelf was replaced by a few cups of Sassafras tea or stewed rhubarb, which pretty much worked the same way as the dreaded tonic. By the time I became a grandmother, a week in Cancun or Barbados or Aruba was the remedy. Or if your pocketbook resembled mine, five days in Kalamazoo.

Some of my friends—whose pocketbooks may be anorectic—swear by a day at the spa.

Say “spa day” and right away you’ll conjure up a jumble of images—pummeling and pomading through ten hours of sauna, massage, styling, tweaking, manicure, pedicure, every-kind-of-cure for the common blahs and disenchantments of the face and figure. Wintertime, springtime, anytime.

View of one of the "Chain"

By happy accident, I discovered another kind of spa day.

We drove from Auburn, my friend Janine and I, in her 4X4, to Chain-O-Lakes State Park about 30 minutes away. Picture a day in late April. Spring sunshine, leaves taking their time unfurling their shades of green. Water standing in fallow fields, running in ditches, swelling creeks, all from late winter snow that had no chance against a young spring breeze and honest-to-goodness sunshine.

In northeastern Indiana we celebrate the first day of spring with the rest of the civilized world—around March 21^st when the spring equinox shows up on the calendar. We know that’s a token celebration—on a par with a green Christmas—because real spring, the one worth celebrating, comes on a day when you least expect it. It’s a mid-week day, when offices and schools and businesses are up and running, expecting their employees and clients and students and customers to show up as well.

But.

On a real spring day, some of us are privileged to get in a 4X4 and cruise the trails and roads of a state park. 10 mph cruising. No hurry. No agenda. Only the journey.

The 4-by heads into the park, makes a loop around one or two of the lakes in the chain, from which the park gets its name, and climbs one of the steep hills into a wooded area. Campground, cabins, fish-cleaning station…. Down another hill into the valley floor. What used to be a racing creek has expanded into a flowing meadow. The water’s nearly level with the bridge over the no-longer-dashing waterway.

We stop and park on the side of the road. Janine takes out one of her cameras, a monster thing with a long lens that allows her to poke her eye into Nature’s intimate business from a safe distance. I watch last autumn’s leaves float down the lazy stream and let the sun fall on my face.

Our only companions are woodsy inhabitants, too shy to come out.

When Janine winds up her photo op, we continue our loop around the park, and end up at one side of the biggest lake where a pier juts out into the main channel. I stand in the sun, my arms propped on the side supports of the pier, while Janine snaps photos of me in various hats and scarves for future use as publicity pics.

We’ve spoken fewer than fifty words since we entered the park. No pummeling, no pomading. No need for the delights of the day spa.

Because here, in this natural setting, we’ve bathed in warm spring air so delicious you can almost taste it, spied out elusive greens that will soon be in full leaf to delight the eye, caught the springtime perfume of sun on old leaves and new growth. Our souls have basked in Nature music: bird song, trickles of water running over stones, dry leaves from a year ago whisked away by a sudden breeze.

We’ve spent no money. Yet we’ve received simple gifts: cures for the common winter blahs, and disenchantments of the spirit. You can’t bottle this tonic and sell it for profit. This cure is free for the taking. If you want it.

Autumn @ Chain-O-Lakes
Another inspiring season

 WORDS FOR SPRINGTIME . . . 

[I'm repeating this post because it fits so perfectly the current time and place. For some people, Spring doesn't last long enough. For others, it's 'way too long (allergies also bloom in the spring, tra la). But I find poetry often helps me go forward when life isn't working out as I intended. Hope this poem from Robert Frost makes your day.]

We are well and truly into Spring. My neighbor has mowed his grass twice since the snow went away. Birds are eating everything we put out. And the wren, who likes my house, has tried again, this year, to build a nest on top of my porch light--we even gave her a new wren house of her very own!

Here's a poetic thought from Robert Frost to honor Spring:

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.


-----

Spring will be with us for a while yet, then we'll let her go and enter into another season.
We don't own her--she's only loaned to us for a time. Let's enjoy Spring while she's with us.


P.S. I saw my first goldfinch this morning, all decked out in her golden plumage. Now there's something that can stay for three seasons!



Blessings from

    Thursday's Child

 In Just-

spring

[Another re-posting . . . going through a rough patch (it's a spring thing) at present and I'm a little distracted. April is the month my mother died, and to this day, 62 years later, I recall  those last days and weeks. Re-reading this post has helped me--I can now begin to celebrate the opening-up of another spring.]

This is what I call the e e cummings season, "mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful." Today’s forecast calls for light rain, which begins any time now; my guess is that it’s holding off till I go out to run errands and will let go the minute I open my car door. But that’s just a guess.

Just-spring here in Northeast Indiana comes with a full basket of tulips and dandelions, mowed yards, birds courting, bushes in red and green and yellow, trees in pink and white and magenta and yellow-green.

Landscaping is newly mulched. Gardeners grow antsy waiting for the frost-warnings to lift so they can be the first kid on their block with annuals shoving each other aside in hanging baskets and flower boxes and any little patch of soil that doesn’t have anything in it.

-----

Spring returns every year (March 20th or 21^st in the northern hemisphere), with new growth in the earth; with hope for new beginnings (Easter is a spring festival, you know); with beauty so abundant you feel it will run right over you.

It’s overflowing and everywhere. And it’s for everyone.

Spring (with apologies to Janne Robinson for her lovely poem) doesn’t care: whether you’re black, white, Hispanic, or other. If you’re super-sensitive to pollen or criticism or penicillin. If you’re grieving or rejoicing. If you’re too old to, too young to, or don’t give a damn. If your income exceeds your outgo or you have no income worth talking about. Spring breathes on us, whether we like it or not.

-----

All the therapy in the world won’t take away Spring. All the fervent prayers, tears, threats, tantrums—no effect on Spring.

We’ll have to deal with Spring--endure it, embrace it; enjoy it, avoid it. Spring doesn’t care.

-----

If you see a white-haired woman in a black sweatshirt and New Balance walking shoes, carrying a box of Kleenex, that’s probably me. I’ll sneeze from car to grocery store and back again.

Spring doesn’t care.

But I do.

Celebrate Spring! And I hope you enjoy what She has to offer.

 MARCH MISCELLANY

Day after tomorrow, it'll be April Fool's Day.

Resurrection Lilies, in progress

The next day will be Palm Sunday.

Another week passes, and it's Easter.

Somehow, March snuck by me and I didn't even notice. But I can't say I'm sorry to see it go--it came in lionish and seems to be going out with the same attitude.

Whatever happened to "In like a lion, out like a lamb"?

I'm not the only person who has picked up on the yo-yo activity of March weather. In fact, the whole winter went bouncing up and down on a string. Maybe this is all localized here in Hoosier land--or maybe, just in my own neighborhood. 

But whatever the causes, I'm trusting the weather to mind its manners after Easter. That was what I learned when I became an adopted Hoosier 60 years ago (makes me faint to write that number). But, yes, that was the prevailing wisdom: Don't expect nice weather until after Easter. 

I'm not so gullible that I believe that 100%. But it does have a nice positive feel to it.

-----

What else is going on in March?

Friends report their kids are entering the last trimester of high school. Baseball teams are being chosen. School golf teams are gearing up for some tournaments. Nursing students are nearing the end of their studies. 

The view outside my windows includes:

• green grass (same color it was all winter when the snow melted)
• green shrubs (never change color)
• green leaves on the Resurrection Lily bed--that's new. Last year's dried tree leaves covered that patch all winter--the lily leaves are not long but they're thick and very green
• dog walkers every morning
• birds que-ing up for seed and suet several times a day
• deciduous trees still shy--no buds, no leaves, no blooms

As I hinted a few paragraphs ago, we need a change in the weather.

-----

All kinds of things happened in March, in days gone by. Fr'instance:

• 1872 - Yellowstone becomes the U.S.'s first national park.
• 1932 - The Hoover Dam is completed. 
• 1958 - U.S. launches Explorer I, its first satellite. 
• 1961 - The U.S. Peace Corps was founded.

If you want to know more, just type in "what happened in March in history?" and your browser will bring up all-sorts. Be prepared--it'll include the good, the bad, and the ugly.

-----

So today we say goodbye to March. Next week we'll be coming to you from a spot in April--a month that always makes me think of sunshine. 

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

coming soon!