Posted tagged ‘quiet day’

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“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

September 6, 2013

Last night was put an afghan on the bed and close the windows cold. It was a delight. I slept soundly and late, didn’t wake up until 9:30. My mother would have said I must have needed the sleep. I watched the Sox and Yankees until 11:30 then read for an hour. Fern and Gracie stayed close to me in bed. They must have been chilly.

Today is a beautiful day with a feeling of fall about it. The sunlight is sharp and warm, but it drifts in and out of clouds. Fern is stretched in the sun by the front door.

It is so quiet here. The kids are all in school, not a single lawnmower can be heard, the house next door is empty for the season and I don’t think I’ve even heard a car go up the busy street at the end of my road. I like the silence.

My life has been amazing and now and then I think about it and give thanks. The other day I talked to Grace in Accra for a long time and last week I called Rose Atiah in Bolga. I just picked up the phone, called Ghana and spoke to students I taught in 1969. It is still a little mind-boggling to me that I actually lived in Africa for a little over two years. Who gets that lucky?  I worked for 35 years doing something I loved. Granted, I still groaned when the alarm went off at 5, but I never really minded going to work. I never considered it a grind. Every day was somehow different despite the sameness of the tasks. I got to retire early, nine years ago, and I love every day and am seldom bored. I can to sit outside on the deck in the morning with my papers and coffee and linger as long as I want. Who gets that lucky? I have traveled many places in the world and have seen the most glorious sights, pages of my geography books come to life. I dreamed I would travel, and my dreams came true just like in a Disney movie. Cinderella went to the ball. I went to Machu Picchu.

I have one errand left over from yesterday’s long list, but there’s no big hurry. I have all day.

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“It never gets easier, missing you. And sometimes I wonder if it ever will.”

July 28, 2013

Last night it rained, not a lot as under the umbrellas is dry. I sat outside to read my first paper. Pandora was set to 60’s rock, the coffee was perfect and the newspaper wasn’t filled with dire events. I call that a great morning.

In the musical Camelot, King Arthur describes Camelot and says, “The rain may never fall till after sundown.” I always thought that a good idea.

I still have bits of the old Sunday in my head. It was a day to recharge for the week. We went to church, came home, got changed, and hung around until after Sunday dinner. Even then we didn’t go far. Sunday seemed to bring a quiet as if it were built in to the day. Even my neighborhood with a million kids was quiet. That’s a piece that hasn’t disappeared. I don’t hear anyone. I hear a bird or two but no people’s’ voices. Not a car has gone up my street. I know if I leave my neighborhood the stores will be open, and cars will have filled parking lots and lines of cars will sit barely moving on the roads, but for now, I’ll stay here and let it be my Sunday.

Each generation gives something to the next. Most times they probably don’t realize it. From my mother we have these wonderful sayings, and we use them all the time with each other. “It’s too cold to snow,” my mother always said. Mostly she was wrong. When it rained, it was a deluge, and my sister told me that the other day. Snow in spring is poor man’s fertilizer, and my father always noted it and so do I. My parents gave us big things, but we use the small ones the most, the every day observations of life. My mother learned them from her mother and passed them along to us without knowing we’d hold on to them so closely. They are precious and very time we use one, we bring my mother or father back with us for a little while.

No one ever told us how difficult it is and how long that feeling lasts when you lose your parents. I suppose we wouldn’t have believed them if they had.

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“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”

July 9, 2013

Today is dark with a gray sky. The humidity is high but not unbearable as there is a slight breeze, and a breeze is welcomed however small. The paper says rain with thunder and lightning. I am already looking to it. I love storms, and we do need the rain. This morning I have a doctor’s appointment for a wound check and yesterday the physical therapist signed off on me. That means I can now drive. I can be part of the world again.

All the windows and doors are opened, but I don’t hear anything, a random bird now and then but that’s all. I wonder where everyone is. This small street has kids, lots of kids: eight of them under seven years old, and I don’t even hear them. Not even a dog is barking which is also unusual. Maybe my invitation to wherever everyone has gone got lost in the mail.

It seems strange not to be traveling this summer. The last two summers I went back to Ghana, and if I had the money, I’d go again. I plan on austerity being my life style for the next year so I can save enough to go to Ghana again. Even after 40 years away, it seemed like home, and that connection is even greater after having been back a second time. Most interesting of all was meeting my former students many of whom are now retired and in their early 60’s. They refused to call me anything but madam or Ms. Ryan. I was and still am their teacher.

In the summer of 1969, I trained in Ghana to be a Peace Corps volunteer from June until early September. We had no phones, no televisions and no computers so we knew nothing of what was happening in the world. Letters from home were newsy but only about the family. One place where I stayed during training had a radio, and we listened to Voice of America and the moon landing. That was it for the entire summer. I, who used to read the paper every day, didn’t even care. None of us did. At night, we played cards and drank a few beers (I had coke-hate beer) at the local spots and the wide world never intruded. We didn’t even notice. All of us were too busy learning a new language and learning to live in a culture so different from our own.

Now I read two papers, am on my computer every day, carry my cell phone everywhere and watch news on TV. Sometimes I am very sorry I am so connected. The world at large intrudes on my life. Every bad thing that happens is blasted everywhere all the time, often the whole day on TV. I watch and am saddened by so much tragedy. Sometimes I long for that summer when I knew so little of what was happening in the world. I was blissful and ignorant.

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“The trouble with, “A place for everything and everything in its place” is that there’s always more everything than places.”

June 8, 2013

When the rain came yesterday, it arrived with a vengeance and poured all afternoon and evening. I left my window open here in the den so I could hear the heavy drops hitting the deck and trees. The wind was so strong it blew one of my huge umbrellas over, but I was lucky, though, as it missed 4 lanterns attached to the deck rail and three clay pots. My deck is again filled with debris, small branches and leaves, but I’m leaving the cleaning until the deck is dry.

Saturday is usually a busy day on my street, but it is still and quiet outside: no lawnmowers, no kids playing and no dogs barking, a rarity on any day. I went out yesterday to Hyannis and early last evening to dinner with my friend so I have not been housebound, but I feel it anyway. I think the clouds and the rain close in after a while.

Today I have no plans, nothing on my dance card. I might just do laundry; it’s been sitting in the hall for a few days. A while back that would have driven me crazy, and I would have had it finished the same day I brought it downstairs. That was when I still worked. My days had structure back then; they had to so I could get everything done. Now I do my chores whenever the spirit moves me. The laundry doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ll get to it sometime.

I have this cabinet, the one with all the pots and pans, assorted dishes for special occasions, small appliances, bowls and some Tupperware, and I think way in the back of it, in the corner, is a mouse nest. I know the mice are all gone, but I know the nest is still there. Before I started the Great Mouse War, I found gnawed paper towels, a perfect nesting material, soft and comfy. I keep saying I’m going to clean that cabinet, but I have this vision of starting the project, getting too tired to finish and leaving the kitchen floored covered with whatnots from that cabinet. A while back I did clean it, and the cabinet looked great, but right now it’s filled. I don’t even remember what is in the way back. I’m thinking Skip, my factotum, might be just the guy for this project.

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” For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.”

May 17, 2013

Today is much chillier than yesterday though still sunny. I was on the deck for only a few minutes this morning before I felt cold and came back inside. Gracie followed me. She is my barometer. If Gracie stays outside, it’s warm. If not, it’s a bit chilly. She’s looking out the front door right now. It’s her view to the world, the small world of our street.

Outside is quiet. Not even a dog is barking. Yesterday I could hear lawn mowers and blowers. Today I hear birds. I know when it gets warm enough to open the windows, I’ll hear all the sounds around me: cars going down the street, people talking, dogs barking at each other and kids laughing and yelling, the ones who live at the other end of my road. My bedroom window is already open, but it’s late when I go to bed so all is quiet.

We always had the May procession around the middle of the month. Every single grade, from 1 to 8, took part. The first grades, for a few weeks before the big day, were taught the songs while the rest of us just practiced a little. We sang the same songs every year so once you learned them they stayed in your head. I still know the words to a couple of them. We all wore our best clothes, girls in dresses and boys in creased pants, shirts and ties. The second graders wore their white first communion suits and dresses. The procession was a long block walk. We sang as we walked. The sidewalks were lined with mostly parents. It wasn’t like a parade with cheering, but there were some claps to acknowledge us. We always ended at the grotto next to the church where there was a statue of Mary in a niche. Every year it was an eighth grader who climbed stairs to the niche and crowned Mary with flowers while everyone sang Oh, Mary We crown thee with blossoms today. When I was an eighth grader, I was chosen to crown Mary. It was quite the honor. I was nervous, and I remember climbing the stairs and finding I couldn’t quite get the crown on her head. It was a little too high so the priest who was spotting me on the stairs sort of pulled my arm a little higher and I was able to crown Mary with the flowers.

After the crowning we all walked in a procession to the schoolyard which was just behind the grotto. The procession ended there and the photo ops began. Groups stood on the school lawn and parents used their Brownies to snap pictures. One of my favorites is all of us in what must have been our Easter dresses and my brother in his first communion white suit. He was seven then, and I was eight. The front group is kneeling on the grass, and we are all pretending to pray. That picture makes me smile. I know my mother put us up to the pretend praying. It’s not anything we’d have ever done on our own. We’d probably been running around playing on the lawn, May procession or not.

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