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“Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment – a little makes the way of the best happiness.”
April 14, 2012Today makes me smile. It is warm and sunny and we’re glowing with victory because the Red Sox won their home opener yesterday in grand fashion. Sometimes all the pieces just fall into place and a day, even one as simple as this, feels perfect. My bedroom window was open all night, and I could smell spring when I woke up this morning. While my coffee was perking, I went out to the deck where I scared away a bird who was using the dog’s water bowl for its bath. That reminded me to clean and fill the big bird bath and the small one the chickadees like, the one which is really a candle holder. My deck is now bird ready.
I didn’t do anything yesterday except read and watch the baseball game, but today I have a few household chores, none of them strenuous, then this afternoon I’ll watch the game. Once I finish my chores, I’ll sit on the deck a while and replenish my vitamin D.
When we were young and Saturday was our day to roam, I think it was my mother’s favorite day. My dad was outside piddling around with the grass and the garden, my sisters were playing dolls on the back steps, and my brother and I were off on some adventure so my mother had the house to herself. My brother and I chose our direction randomly. Sometimes we went to the field where the horses were or to the farm at the edge of town to watch the cows or to the railroad tracks, our route to nowhere. I remember the piles of manure on the farm, and the mud around the barn filled with the hoof marks of the cows. It was a dairy back then, and I even have a milk bottle with Weiss Farm written on it. The cows were black and white. I didn’t know until I was much older that they were Holsteins. The horses could never be caught, and even if we did manage to corner one, neither one of us could ride, especially bare-back, but we always made plans to catch and ride them anyway. We knew where one end of the track was but we never made it to the other end. We went a little further each time but never really too far. Trains ran back then, and we’d jump off the track and stand close enough so that the wind from the train cars blew our hair and clothes. Once we thought of jumping the train and letting it take us wherever it was going, but we never got up the nerve.
It’s time for me to enjoy a perfect day!
“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
April 13, 2012The house was really cold when I woke up this morning, 60° cold. I turned up the heat and nothing happened. I cursed a bit then decided to check the red on/off switch: it was on. I next checked the thermostat, and it was off. Glory be, no repairman needed! I turned the switch to heat and the furnace responded. The house got warmer than outside.
I know radiators aren’t the most attractive decorations for a house, but when I was a kid, I always took comfort from the hissing of the steam as the water coursed through the radiator at the foot of my bed. When I was cold, I could put my feet under it, and they’d quickly get warm. Mittens drying on the top of the radiator would steam a bit as they dried, and you had to remember to turn them over or the top side would never dry. The radiator was noisy so the house at night was never quiet, but it was always warm.
Today is Friday the 13th. I’m not suspicious so it is like any Friday for me. It’s a pretty day with the sun bright in the sky. Lots of birds are in and out at the feeders. I have a new feeder for Baltimore orioles that has yet to go out, and I’ll do that later. When I looked them up, the Audubon site said around the first of May for orioles, but all the birds were early this year so the orioles may already be here looking for their jelly. I need to get mealy worms hoping I can attract blue birds.
I don’t think I noticed birds when I was young. Seagulls at the beach and pigeons in the city are all I remember. Every morning when I woke up, I’d hear birds greeting the day, but I have no idea which birds were in my neighborhood. I assume robins as they’re everywhere but can’t think of any others. Nobody had bird feeders so there wasn’t any reason for the birds to drop by to visit.
When I was in Ghana, my family moved off cape to the same town where I had grown up. My mother put bird feeders in her yard. She got pigeons. We used to laugh and call them country pigeons. She wasn’t amused.
“Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.”
April 8, 2012I always think Easter Sunday should be sunny and even warm, all the better to show off all those new clothes. It’s cloudy right now, but I think the sun is struggling to break through the grayness. Gracie and I had an adventure earlier this morning. We sneaked down to my friends’ house and decorated the tree near their deck. We do it every year. This year was a streamer of eggs from branch to branch, some wooden rabbits doing gardening hanging off the small branches and decorative eggs on sticks stuck into their pansies right by the door. They haven’t seen them as their backdoor is still closed so they’re not awake yet. This is the only time of year I can see all the way down to the end of the street.
When I was little, Easter morning never had the same degree of excitement as Christmas morning, but we’d still run to find our baskets. We’d munch on jelly beans as we checked out everything one at a time. The chocolate rabbit was always the most prominent standing tall as it did in the basket. There were coloring books and crayons or small toys and always a stuffed animal, usually a rabbit or even a duck, wearing a hat and sometimes a colored vest. We’d play and munch until my mother dragged us away to get ready for mass.
Easter was always a big day in church. The haphazard members of the congregation only went on Christmas and Easter so the pews were filled. I remember the church looked festive on Easter Sunday as lent was finally over. Tall white lilies in pots were on the steps to the altar and by the rail in the front. The statues were uncovered, and the priest wore white. The rest of us wore mostly pastels and hats were a necessary accessory. Men had fedoras and women had hats with veils. Boys had none, but we girls wore hats with flowers or ribbons. The church was awash with colors in every pew.
Some Easter Sundays we’d go to visit my grandparents. The house was filled with my aunts, uncles and cousins. My grandmother always had chocolate for us, usually a small rabbit, as an Easter gift. We’d run up and down the two sets of stairs chasing each other while the adults stayed in the kitchen on the bottom floor. My grandfather always hid in his room away from the tumult.
My father usually hustled us out the door in the early evening and we’d fall asleep on the way home, exhausted by the festivities of the day and all those stairs.
“Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.”
April 6, 2012My casual morning has made me a bit tardy in writing today. I was up quite late last night and slept in this morning. It was Gracie who decided it was time to get up and out. It was probably a good thing as I have to hit the aisles and grocery shop. I don’t even have the bare essentials: coffee and toilet paper. I finished the last of the coffee this morning and the toilet paper roll looks a bit skimpy.
The Red Sox lost their opener yesterday. They tied it up only to lose in the bottom of the ninth. Oh, the dismay!
My neighbors have returned from Florida so that’s another sign of spring. Today, though, is still in the 40’s which I think is chilly. The sun is shining and the sky is blue but they are merely for effect. They look best from inside the house through the window.
We always had today off from school when I was a kid. We were supposed to go to church in the afternoon during the vigil, but we seldom did. Once I went and brought a book which I hid inside the hymnal and read while I was sitting in the pew. I looked pious with my head down as if deep in prayer. Even when I was working in the public school, it was a day off. One year the school committee decided that because Good Friday was connected to religion it was going to be a school day, but people could take it off for religious reasons. The number of teachers who called in floored me especially as some of them hadn’t seen the inside of a church since their baptisms. We had no substitutes and had to have kids in the auditorium for large-scale study halls. That was the one and only time we had school on Good Friday.
We never had a countdown to Easter the way we did to Christmas. We knew our baskets would have candy, a stuffed animal when we were younger, probably a coloring book and crayons, maybe a kite and a few other small toys. We could always count on a chocolate rabbit and jelly beans. The rest was usually a surprise. I saw the best chocolate rabbit for sale in a catalog. It came with extra ears as the ears were always the first to go.
When we were younger, my mother bought inexpensive chocolate as we didn’t know the difference, but when we got older, she shopped at a candy store because we could taste the difference. I still shop at a candy store to make up baskets for my two friends. I buy little treasures to add to the candy and wrap all of them so the baskets are more fun. Today I have to candy shop. That makes going to the grocery store a bit more palatable.
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
April 5, 2012I’m thinking it must really be spring. The nights are cold but the days are sunny and mostly in the 50’s. Yesterday the plants I had ordered on-line were placed in the garden. I got excited at the idea that soon enough I can fill my wagon at the garden store, and my front garden will be a blaze of color. Spring makes me smile.
The Red Sox open today in Detroit. My expectations are lower than they have been in years because of last September and their spectacular fall from grace, but this is a familiar place. Until the Sox won the World Series in 20o4, we Sox fans always had hope but never too much hope. The let down was less painful that way.
I read in the paper this morning that the New York City Department of Education has sent a list of fifty banned words to textbook publishers. No, they aren’t composed of four letters, and no, they are never beeped on TV. Here’s some of the list: dinosaur, birthday, pepperoni, dancing, home computers, Halloween, space aliens, divorce, slavery, terrorism and disease. The school department wants these words eliminated because banning them “allows our students to complete practice exams without distraction.” With tongue in cheek, I wonder about pizza without pepperoni, and I’ll have to start singing Happy (hum here) to you, Happy (hum here) to you and T-Rex was just a big animal. I’m not sure how I’ll get around dancing. Gyrations could be the substitute but that seems suggestive. ET is just a visitor from another place. History is going to take a big hit if we eliminate discussions of slavery. As for the others, how can the school department eliminate the word terrorism? What caused that big hole in the ground?
This is taking political correctness to a terrifying height. The reasons for banning these words all hinge on so called cultural sensitivity. Talk of dinosaurs may offend people who don’t believe in evolution though that has nothing to do with dinosaurs. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays so no one else should either. Pepperoni is junk food, and not everyone can afford a home computer. Rock and Roll music is on the list. Maybe we need a new Alan Freed to rise in defense. I am speechless which is probably good as I wouldn’t want to offend!
List of banned words: Political Correctness.
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