DID YOU CELEBRATE?

Two days ago, April 23rd, was the putative death date of William Shakespeare, in 1616. He was baptized on April 26th, 1564. Did you know that? Yep, the Bard himself. Lived 52 years a looooong time ago and wrote a ton of stuff still being read and performed in our time.

Some people still think Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's stuff.

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Last Sunday, April 21st, was Easter Sunday in Western Christian churches. Folks went to services (some for their semi-annual visit), little kids hunted Easter eggs (plastic ones full of candy--what kind of bird laid those?), voices raised roofs in praise and thanksgiving. Singers and organists went home either hoarse or with hand cramps. It was a wholly satisfying day.

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Have you dug out your bikini? Sun hat? Sun screen? Lawn chaise?

Is your lawn mower cleaned and oiled and rarin' to go?

It's important to be ready for upcoming events before they arrive in a flurry of sun, high temps, and humidity. (Don't forget the bottle of water.)

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'Tis the season for:
   - birthdays (always)
   - weddings
   - graduations
   - Mother's Day
   - Cinco de Mayo
   - golf, baseball, softball, swimming
   - Memorial Day, which signals the onset of the summer season, 
     despite the calendar's insistence that we wait until Friday June 21st.

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Celebrations come in all sizes, shapes, colors, styles--it's a you-name-it kind of thing.

For example:

My friend Jane had shoulder surgery in early March. Relieved pain, but also brought limitations in movement--physical therapy does a lot to reclaim the range of motion, but Jane discovered the best PT was just getting on with what she could do. She's a quilter, so she set about cutting out blocks from tee-shirts and big squares from stabilizer. I got in on the ironing task, attaching the fusible stabilizer to the tee-shirt material. When I saw her this past Monday, she'd already been driving her car, shopping for groceries, and going to aqua-robics class at the Y. I call that celebration.

Another kind of celebration is quiet--giving thanks for each new day, as my friend Marilyn does, and the lovely lady I met at a coffee shop, Lucy, who is probably now 90, instead of 89 when I last saw her. Some of us give thanks at bedtime for the day just past.

My daughter in Ohio will be on a round of celebrations in May: two birthdays, a wedding, a graduation, not to mention starting this year's vegetable garden. She works a full-time job, her husband has his own business, and still they find time for all these events.

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What, really, is the one thing that makes celebrations what they are?

In my book, a celebration makes a connection--between me and someone I know, am related to, someone I like or respect or admire. Between me and God. Between me and people I don't even know (my country isn't the only one that celebrated Easter a few days ago).

And connections remind us that we're part of the human family--like it or not. There's a little lesson in humility there for us, if we look for it.

APRIL!

How's your April shaping up? We're past the halfway mark, and in three more days, it'll be Easter. In my neck of the woods, Easter is the unofficial benchmark for the true arrival of spring.

That said, I have to report temps in the upper 60s and lower 70s, off an on . . . . This has to be the most quixotic weather northeast Indiana has known. And I've been here 56 years.

Apparently the wildlife can tolerate our 60s followed by 40s followed by 50s followed by 30s. As I write this, robins make the rounds of the natural cafeteria my lawn offers. Baby grackles have been haunting my feeders for a couple of weeks. Squirrels chase each other and themselves up and down and around the big maples out front.

Grass is green. Really really green. And it'll need to meet the lawnmower in a few more days.

School buses make the rounds every morning. Before we know it, school will be out. Only another six or seven weeks to go. 

And it's nearly time for the blooming of the garage sales.

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While we wait for events, here are a few thoughts from other folks who've pondered April:

Alan Alda: When I was about ten years old, I gave my teacher an April Fool's sandwich, which had a dead goldfish in it.

Mark Twain:  The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

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Here's what Christopher Columbus wrote after he reached our continent:

The air soft as that of Seville in April, and so fragrant that it was delicious to breathe it.

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And here's one that made me catch my breath; I know just what he means:

Edward Carpenter: In April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land of dreams into a very different sphere.

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I'm still following Heather Lende's philosophy, "Find the Good." It's there--somewhere--but we may have to search diligently. Worth the effort.

LAUGHTER!

[I'm repeating this post because . . . well, because I think a lot of people need to remember that laughter is important to us human folks. If you're in a low place in your life at the moment, see if there isn't something you can laugh about. If it's a really really low place, try for a smile, however weak, or even a light giggle. I'll join you.]

My laughter tank has been running low lately. When I began looking for quotations to illustrate this post, I discovered what I've always known (how's that for logic?)--laughter and pain are considered by many, many people to be two sides of the same coin.

Okay, I can work with that. I don't laugh when things are going badly. Say, for example, my car doesn't start, or the garage door spring won't lift the door when I push the button, or I slip on the front steps and skin my knee (if I'm lucky and don't go into sprain/broken bone country) . . . none of those qualified for the slightest chuckle. Not even in retrospect.

But I do know that when I'm feeling low, when my emotions have managed to delude me into thinking nothing good will ever happen again (rare, but it has happened), then I'm ready for relief. I've been known to watch a TV series that used to send me into gales of laughter, but if I'm in that low-down place, nothing sounds or looks funny.

I love Erma Bombeck for her home-grown humor. She saved my bacon on more than one occasion when I had a houseful of little kids all needing something different, and I just needed a little peace and quiet. She could laugh at herself and her situation--somewhat like mine--and I was eased.

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This past winter I had a long spell of nothing-funny-about-anything. In those periods I can't read, I don't want to write, knitting/sewing/cooking don't interest or distract me. 

To have some voices in the house, I put on a DVD--TV series, movie, whatever; I don't remember just what it was. And within 20 minutes I had laughed out loud twice. Twice!

Those moments of laughter brought me back into the human race.

(Thank you, Mark Twain--for reminding me that I do have "one really effective weapon" in my personal arsenal.)

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Why would we waste any of our days mired in sadness or anger or fear? Well, apparently we can't banish them entirely. Can you imagine day after day after day of laughter? Important to have a balance. Sadness is a natural thing to happen to us--we all lose something or someone. Anger rises when we least expect it. Fear? Oh, yeah, fear is always around waiting to pounce.

So a little laughter each day may save it from being wasted? Hmm. Need to think about that for a while. But I'm 99.44% sure I can live with it.

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Do you have someone you can laugh with? My closest friends are people who smile or giggle or chortle or double over with mirth at the same things that hit me that way. Doesn't have to be trading one-liners. Think about it. 

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As time passes, I'm learning to let go of more and more things that used to get under my skin and keep me in a constant state of irritation. More things strike me as funny. Or nutty. Or absurd.

Smiling comes easier. (Remember the old joke? "Smile! People will wonder what you're up to.") I smile a lot. People at the grocery store and Walmart smile back. Maybe they wonder what I'm up to. Or, maybe, they know.

Have a blessed week . . . filled with laughter, and joy.

SPRING TONIC

[One of Life's universal events decided to visit me this week. This afternoon I'll play the organ at a memorial service for one of my church's long-time members, a devout man whose very presence in church was a blessing to all of us. He suffered various illnesses and disabilities; yet he and his wife came every Sunday as long as his health allowed. We will fill the church with hymns of joy and praise to God for the life this man lived among us.

Today I'm re-posting about one of my favorite days--a new kind of "spa day" during early spring, when I struggled to find hope. May my thoughts ease your life also.]

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

MISTAKES WERE MADE . . .

Back in the day of teaching composition to college freshmen, I was obliged to acquaint the students with certain rules that would keep them from falling a letter grade or two or three below what their ideas merited. One of those rules was "Passive voice should not be used."

I loved that way of expressing it--using the very mistake that students should avoid.

Why not just say, "Avoid passive voice"?

Ah, well, another example of Nobody's Perfect, and Mistakes Will Be Made.

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Another rule--this time from my family's collective wisdom--was "Experience is the best teacher."

That seemed to be a nice corollary to "Mistakes will be made." The obvious connection is that we benefit from the experience (of making a mistake) by learning from the mistake.

However! One of my favorite professors said, "People don't learn from their mistakes." He was serious. But, was he correct in his thinking? Sad to say, my experience of teaching freshman composition showed he was indeed on the right track. Very few students learned from their mistakes by changing their writing habits. They wrote because that was the assignment; they did the least they could do for a passing grade (C-, which was the lowest acceptable grade to pass the course); and they avoided their prior transgressions, often while committing new ones.

I hasten to add that I have, from time to time, learned something from my mistakes. The stumbling block is to remember what the prior mistake was, how it occurred, and what I can do to avoid that particular pitfall this time. (The operative word here is remember.)

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Enough ancient history.

Let's get back to Mistakes, Making Of..

From what I can glean in reading and listening, many people seem to think that life is about damage control. After a mistake is made, the thinking goes like this:

   - What can we do now?
   - How can we cover this up?
   - Who can we blame?
   - How can this be turned to our advantage?

Does anybody ever ask: What can we learn?

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I'm inclined to think there are very few true "mistakes" in life. What looks like a wrong turn in thinking or in the execution of an idea may be a "happy accident."

Consider composers, painters, poets, novelists; scientists; business people; quilters, photographers . . . . (You can come up with your own list; mine would take up the space of two or three of these posts.)

As far back as you can go, there was some practitioner of an art or craft, some scientist or entrepreneur, who is remembered for her/his "new" way of doing things.

The hide-bound traditionalist says, these are mistakes. Pure and simple. Not the way we do things, old chap.

The unconventional thinker says, the new ways of doing things could be called "happy accidents," or even "inspired accidents." Did the new practice come out of making a mistake that could be seen by the mistake-maker as simply another way of looking at a problem? (Radical thought there.)

Perhaps the mistake-maker, so-called, had a moment of insight into the everyday, the ordinary, that made it at once new, extraordinary.

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Dante's Inferno detailed "nine concentric circles of torment," otherwise known as Hell. I suspect one of those levels includes people who like to point out other people's mistakes and who, themselves, are convinced they never make mistakes. Perhaps in the same level we can include all the people who try to cover up what has happened or to blame others for one's own sins. (The question is: Can anyone escape this punishment?)

I'd like to close with another cliche--also learned from my extended family's collective wisdom: "Live and let live." 

Yes, mistakes will be made . . . by me, by you, by people we (erroneously) think are perfect.

Do we need to point them out? Only if they impact the life and liberty of someone who can't speak up about it.

Do we actually need to do anything at all about other people's mistakes? Maybe observe and then try to avoid that particular misstep. Not dwell on what happened to someone else. And if we're the one who got the brunt of the mistake, try to forgive.

If it's my own mistake, try to forgive myself and move on. Learn something from what I did wrong. And seek forgiveness if I've wronged another person.

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Maybe I should've warned you that this was going to be a difficult topic. If my thinking was wrong, please forgive me. (Thank you.)

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SYNONYMS FOR MISTAKES:

     BLOOPERS - ERRORS - FLUBS - GAFFES - OUTTAKES - GOOFUPS

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SPRING - DAY 2

March here in the Northeast Corner didn't come in like a lion, nor did it seem especially lamb-like. It just sort of crept in and stayed.

Spring, in similar fashion, didn't make a big whoop-de-doo about her arrival--daytime temps ranged in the 40s, and nighttime temps in the 30s didn't make any difference to the roads. We've had a couple of light rains, but not enough to call it a rainy day. Grass isn't any greener--only that left-over green of winter.

Maybe I'm impatient--after all, this is only Day 2 of the new season. I didn't expect instant warm breezes, flowers popping up in full bloom, grass ready to mow.

Redbud - one of the earliest
to bloom in my corner

But I have seen some lovely encouraging seasonal changes.

Sunday on the way home from church two robins raced across the bows of my SUV and behind them a red-winged blackbird came close enough to wink at me. (Well, a little exaggeration there. It was pretty close, though.)

My resurrection lilies are up. Stems are about five inches high and the bed spreads every year. Should be dozens of flowers this year.

A friend who lives outside of town told me her crocuses are up. But I haven't seen my neighbor's daffodils that always burst into golden glory early in the season. I check on them every day.

Friends in Fort Wayne report their neighbors are cleaning and putting away the snow blowers. Getting out lawn mowing equipment. Hmm. Wonder if they know something the rest of us don't?

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I still love Mark Twain's tongue-in-cheek comment on Spring weather. He's probably right!

Enjoy your segue into Spring!

ANTICIPATION . . .

. . . it's makin' me late,
      and keepin' me waitin'

Carly Simon wrote the song and sang, played, and recorded it in the '70s.

We're always anticipating something. I know, I know, I'm sticking my neck out here and that's a dangerous position to be in, but I do think I can say "we," meaning the vast majority of us, are always anticipating. 

Right now, for those of us who live in the cold, cold northlands, it's Spring we anticipate. I should've counted the number of people who said, "I'm SO over this winter." But it was a goodly number, and even if you didn't say it, you may have thought it. 

So, we anticipate a change in seasons. The warmth and increased sunshine will be most welcome. Then the bushes and trees start to get into the act and we have pollen. Pollen I don't love so much. In fact, not at all. I walk around with a box of tissues under my arm (the big box) and my inhaler is ever by my side.

That's when I anticipate a change in the spring season--get to the later part, I want to say. Let's have some flowers and real leaves and less pollen. How about a little rain to wash the air clean? Then we get rain, sometimes day after day after day of rain, making big puddles at the bottom of my driveway and filling all the shallow spots on the roads.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Anticipating Spring--yes!

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If it isn't a new/different season, then it could be a new baby, or a wedding, or a new friendship. People are important to us, whether near or far away; they may be what brings a smile to our lips when the incessant rain gets us down. (Sorry, I didn't mean to mention that again.) We anticipate hearing their voices, reading their letters and cards, celebrating their birthdays and other special events (even if we can't attend in person). 

Maybe it's a trip--vacation, cruise, going a place we've never been before. 

I suspect your calendar--like mine--is dotted with names of those celebrating something big--birthday, wedding, graduation, due date for the latest baby. Every time I look at those little boxes of info, I think of that person and that event. Often I think back to a birth--two of my children have birthdays in March, so there's a bunch of thinking-back going on here.
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My church celebrates the season of Lent--a time of reflection on the life of Christ and on our own lives. Lent is a penitential season, when we dedicate ourselves to prayer and make an effort to forgive and ask to be forgiven. It may also include fasting and self-denial, depending on the church. (This is a permanent part of our tradition, but underscored during Lent.) And throughout the season of Lent, we anticipate the joy of Easter at the end of this time.

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There's always something coming along. When I go to bed at night, I anticipate getting up in the morning to a pot of coffee, a gluten-free cookie, and an hour spent writing in my journal. This is a time of communing with myself--reflecting on days past, planning the day I'm in, and looking at what's possibly on the calendar for the next few days.

Anticipation is almost but not quite the direct opposite of living in the moment. So long as I don't always live in the future, instead of steeping myself in this moment's gift, I'm fine. The future, like the past, isn't available. 

If we keep perspective about what's to come--or what we hope is to come--we free ourselves up for enjoyment of this moment in time. 

Carly Simon ends her song this way:

     "These are the good old days...."

Why not?