Rock ‘em Sock ‘em April

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can’t keep, all passion is really a setup, and we’re doomed to get our hearts broken yet again.

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

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I almost laughed when I returned a call from the event organizer. I thought we were going to be talking about something else entirely, and when she said, “You’ve won a Big Award,” and I thought it was a kind of joke.

But I’m polite, and I went on listening, and soon I realized she was stone cold serious.  I wrote down the details, thanked her very much, and put the phone down. I was alone in my work office, and I sat for a minute, thinking, “What????!!!”

That was in March, and the award would be presented the next month, and so I started to think of April as The Month of the Award. And as I settled into accepting that this was for real, I started to get excited. I shopped for clothes and bought a sparkly kind of jacket and matching shell, and I drafted a little speech and wrote a brief bio for the paper.  

After the announcement came out in the paper, people stopped me to offer warm wishes wherever I went, and I got texts and even handwritten cards.

All of this reminded me that people really, truly, are kind and NICE, and I started looking forward to the event…and to April.

April, I thought, rocks.

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But April came in wet and relentless. So much rain fell that first week that creeks flooded and roads washed out and Lunch Buddies—the second to last day of Lunch Buddies for the school year—had to be cancelled.

Lightning flashed in the dark night sky, and the winds gripped with icy fingers, threatening. We have farmer friends whose outbuildings were damaged, and when things cleared a little, we learned that three tornadoes had touched down in the county.

Not a really great start, April, I thought.

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“Tom Riley died,” Sean texted, and this, too, I thought must be some sort of—well, not a joke; Sean wouldn’t send that kind of cruel joke,– but a cosmic misunderstanding.

Surely there are many Tom Rileys.

Surely this was a different one…a man, maybe, who was 102 years old, had had a great life, and was reconciled, now, to leaving this particular realm.

But again, the message was the message. Tom, once a little round-faced, red-headed kid—he looked like a choir boy, all innocence and joy, and he was always Tommy to my mother, no matter how old he grew—had, as we say politely, passed away. He went downstairs, Sean reported, and never came back up; his family went to check and it was too late: Tom was gone.

Tom’s parents had a kid the same age as each of the kids in my family, and three more besides,—eight kids in all.

And now five of them are gone. His older sister Mary, who was my age, died a year or two back.

Tom and Sean were same-agers. They each traveled in other circles, but they were the kind of friends who live outside those circles, who stay in touch after—after high school, after college, after the reasons to celebrate and the causes of rebellion had settled into tattoos or scars on their psychic skins.

Tom moved to the west coast, with his wife; they raised beautiful daughters. They traveled. They were wine connoisseurs.  He would often post pictures of fantastic food and the wines he chose to go with it.

And then sometimes he would write the most thoughtful, deep, true, things,—in response to a post or a blog,—and the veneer peeled away, and one who read his words could see the achingly authentic man.

Sean texted, sounding shell-shocked, that he was flying out to the funeral.

I think of Sean, struggling with this loss, and of Tom’s wife and daughters, of the siblings who remain.

And I think, April. What the hell?

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April, I think, sucks.

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April was sky-born wonder, daytime darkness, the sudden cessation of bird song for a night that lasted bare moments.

April was a wonderfully textured weekend staying at the Wilds for an annual meeting, touring the County to revisit projects the Foundation supported.  Feeling proud. Seeing an eagle in flight over Straker Lake.

April was the text I never wanted to receive,—the text that said, “Friends, it’s cancer.” Another stunner, April; you really do break our hearts.

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And the month is waning, and the rain has stopped. The mud is largely dried up; the flowering trees stretch, pink, white, and magenta. Back behind the driveway, the scraggly old lilac bush has clutches of lavender blooms bobbing higher than I can reach to cut them. The magnolias’ blossoms stain the backyard grass.

The forsythia’s yellow petals are long gone, but the dandelions have bloomed once, and are blooming again; they’ll be with us awhile.

The other trees have leafed out, and April is bringing a beautiful, hopeful spring, and I am torn between sadness and terror and a desperate kind of joy.

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And so I pour bones into the white speckled roasting pan, throw in the onion and the celery, drizzle the oil…roast the bones to make the broth. I make a big pot of camper’s stew, (which is really another way of saying, “Leftover Soup”), and I crumble gluten-free Oreos into the food processor; we’ll make a crust for a peanut butter pie.

I’ll search books—of fiction, of non-fiction, of poetry—for words that open doors, words that, if they can’t heal, might help me understand or, at least, ultimately, accept.

I’ll mow the lawn and fill the window boxes; we’ll pick out a replacement for the old sweet gum tree; that old friend was rotten and full of ants, and it endangered all the roofs around it.

I’ll write a letter or two, send out texts…be mindful to connect.

Cooking, reading, planting, connecting…all the things we do when we still have hope.

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There are different kinds of cruelty.

There’s the brutal kind, the kind that says, “Deal with it,” and then takes people and things and joy away, a permanent separation. April is certainly cruel that way.

There’s a mean-spirited, nasty kind of cruelty, too, the kind that says: Here’s what MIGHT happen; I just haven’t decided yet. And I’m not saying that kind doesn’t hurt; it hurts like hell, but it offers chances of redemption…of a total remission, of years of celebrating life to come, of a wonderful new job for one who seeks,… of the outcome not being what the taunting threats suggested.

(Cruelty is not ever, ever okay, but, if I had to choose…)

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And so I leave work a little early one day, and I spend time getting ready, rub gel into my wet hair, spend time with the styling brush and blow dryer (more time, probably, than I’ve spent doing my hair since the days of proms and pageantry); I dress in my new clothes, and I take Mark’s arm, and we drive off to a celebration.

It’s a tempered kind of joy. While I’m enjoying this, others are grieving.

Stomachs knot.

Tears fall.

Worry walks with us, and there’s an awkward kind of balance.

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April holds our hearts in its soft, fresh, green, innocent-looking palm; and it reminds us how little we control.

Nowhere Close to Godliness, But Still…

Sorry, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, but this is true: In spring, an old woman’s fancy turns to thoughts of closets.

It is early Friday morning. I flip open the calendar and see an amazing sight: a weekend free of obligations.

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Ahhhhh, I think, and I look at the three towers of books on Mom’s old treadle sewing machine, which, sitting as it does in the corner of the dining room nearest the front door, is where books and mail go to await being opened. And right beside that old treadle are my freshly washed walking shoes.

I decide to take a walk and ponder, having finished a gripping mystery last night, which book to open today. And, since books are on the mind, I stuff some for the little free library into a bag and take a cool morning walk around the block to the park.

The books in the Little Free are jumbled. I straighten them up, fill in the gaps, organize them by appeal: books for tiny kids, pre-readers, storybooks, chapter books, and grownup books. A couple of storybooks are too broad and wide to slide in sideways; I stack those on top of the others, and I hope some book-hungry kid will find them.

Then I shut the doors, and, just for a moment, I admire the neatness and order of that little house o’ books.

And, as I walk away, I realize what I’m going to do this weekend.

I am going to clean closets,…bring a little of that Little Free order to my home.

(This is not to say, of course, that there won’t be time to read.)

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Our house is almost 90 years old, with heart of pine floors downstairs, and an airy screened side porch, broad bay windows, and built-in bookcases and cabinets. It charms me, this house; I love its character and the patina its years and inhabitants have rubbed into its surfaces.

But closets are the thing I struggle with here. There is no broom closet, and so the broom and mop hang on hooks behind the back door. The coat closet isn’t quite wide enough, and so the coats slide against each other; they jumble and expand, trying hard to escape, when I pull the doors open.

The bedroom closets are narrow and tall. I filled the top shelves when we moved here ten years ago, and many of the things I stuffed up into those high spaces haven’t budged since.

I hung clothes in the bedroom closet, too, of course; a lot of those clothes have been along for the ten-year ride, as well.

And then, when shelf space disappeared, I shoved things—boxes and bags–on to the floor. And when more stuff needed a place to be, I pushed the old stuff backward and crammed the new stuff in.

My closets are a jumbled mess. I fear that they might be a metaphor for my mind.

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Closets are, it occurs to me, a testament to our ability to buy. In the thirties, when this house was built, people had, maybe, clothes for church, clothes for work, and what my mother would call “knock around” clothes. Back in those days, the people who lived here probably had plenty of room in their closets. And they probably didn’t have lots of  decorations and tablecloths and candlesticks and picture frames, boxes of things that are purely GOOD STUFF, stuff that sees the light of day once a year maybe…but stuff I surely cannot throw away.

And there was a time, “A History of Closets Through the Ages” (closetsbydesign.com) tells me, when people didn’t put clothes in closets at all.

In fact, the earliest closets might have been those used by Roman soldiers to stash their weapons and their armor. These moveable storage cabinets—moveable so the accoutrements of war could accompany the soldier who used them—were called “armoriums,” in honor of the arms they held.

It’s kind of startling to realize the moveable closets we use today—often genteel structures we call armoires— evolved their name from a kind of bloodthirsty, military source.  

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I decide to sort clothes first. I have one small closet in the bathroom, and one closet in the bedroom. (Mark’s closet and mine bookend a dormer window, and I’m willing to bet that having two closets in one bedroom, in the 1930’s, was considered pretty luxurious.)

My oft-used clothes, clothes for work and play, live in the bathroom. Blazers and cardigans, dresses and skirts, dressy clothes, and special clothes I just can’t part with, live in the bedroom closet.

I gather bags for clothes to donate to Eastside Ministries.

I pull in a big plastic bin for winter clothes and other clothes I need, for whatever reason, to store.

I go to the bathroom, slide hangers off the rod, and wrestle a big pile of clothes into the bedroom.

I put them on the bed, and I sort them, one by one.

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“A History of the Closet Through the Ages” tells me that closets became popular in France and Germany in the 1500’s. These were small rooms that held the odds and ends of life, (books and maps, suggests the author), but they were NOT a place to keep clothes. I think of the term ‘junk room,’ and I picture, on the screen in the boney cavern, a room full of cracked china and pots with a handle missing, perhaps an abandoned doll; those maps are rolled into scrolls and stuffed into a broken pot in the corner.

There’s a tool or two in there too, and some cooking stuff that is necessary but not often used.

All good stuff–just like mine–but, in the 1500’s, the chances that a broken widget would eventually get mended and reused were probably pretty good.

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I like this question that guides sorting: have I used it within the past year?

And I like the ‘editing’ rules in The Folding Book by Janelle Cohen:

• Does it fit me?
• Is it damaged?
• Does it make me feel good when I wear it?
• Would I wear it tomorrow (if the right occasion arose)?
• Would I want to be seen wearing it in a photo?
• Can I wear it with more than one outfit?
• Am I keeping it for sentimental reasons?

I take a deep and bracing breath, center my thoughts on those guidelines, and I begin to sort.

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Industrialization crept into the world in the 1600’s, marching through the 1700’s, and really gaining traction in the nineteenth century. And all those machines—well, they made stuff. And they made it faster and with less waste than an artisan could make it by hand.

And they made jobs for people, people who then had the money to buy the fruits of the industrial ages.

And so people around the world owned more. And they had more things to store.

In the United States, the clothes closet concept started developing in the 1840’s These closets were built right into the house—no moveable armoires, thank you very much,—and US house dwellers quickly came to see closets as essential.

A hundred years went by, and World War II ended, and an era of never-before-seen prosperity took root. And in that climate, “A History of the Closet Through the Ages” tells me, the modern closet began to evolve. In the 1980’s, the closet concept surged forward; closets became rooms that were both attractive and efficient.

This image from amazon.com has no resemblance to my closet.

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How is it that I have closets crammed with clothes and I often feel I have nothing to wear?

I have clothes that don’t fit.

I pull them off the hangers, fold them neatly, and put them in the Eastside bags. Well, all except one dress, a dress I really love, a dress that isn’t THAT small. I hang that back on its hanger and slide it to the back of the bedroom closet.

A hopeful little talisman, that dress.

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I also save a dress I bought my mother when I worked, right after college, at a fancy department store. Mom did not spend much on her clothes, and this is a really nice dress, well made, classic in lines…

My parents decided, post-retirement, to have their picture taken together (I think they wanted their kids to have a flattering portrait to remember them by), and that was a pretty big deal.

Dad wore his good suit.

Mom wore the dress that still hangs in my closet. I will give this memory dress to a niece one day.

But, with everything else, I am ruthless. I pack up three bulging bags for Eastside. I put winter clothes into the plastic bin.

I carry the bags downstairs, and I reorder the closets, so tops and jackets are in one space, and skirts and dresses in the other. And there is plenty of room to stand back and see what’s there.

I am embarrassed to admit I find things I had forgotten I owned: a jumper. A shrug. A soft and beautiful scarf.

I feel almost like I went shopping. There are fewer clothes in my closets, but there’s so much more to wear.

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The clothes are sorted.

And the library calls to say my reserve book is, finally, waiting for me. I grab James and my jacket and we drive over to the John McIntire Library to pick up The Women by Kristen Hannah. (The books waiting on the old treadle sewing machine sigh, dejected; they’ll wait there a little longer.)

Warmed by what I’ve accomplished, I carry that special book home, home to the reading chair, where I snuggle up on this unhooked, unchained, weekend, and I read.

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The next day I attack the stuff on the bedroom closet floor.

I have, for instance, two bulging canvas bags of materials I used for mental health courses I taught, as a volunteer, ten years ago. I struggle both bags downstairs, and I pull materials out and put them on the table.

I click open the jaws of old binders, and I pull out reams of outdated teaching materials and put them into the recycling bin. I find notebooks filled with notes I will never use again. They join the binder pages.

I find, too, some handwritten notes that I tuck away and keep—a thank you note from Terri! A letter from Kim as she entered the twilight of her very last days! In there, in among the outdated paper, there are a couple of real treasures.

I put those into a keepsake drawer.

I discard journals and articles that once engaged me, but not so much, anymore. I put framed photos in a box.

I find one shoe and one boot. I throw those abandoned mates away.

And, ahoy me mateys, I have a clear floor in my bedroom closet! I get the swiffer out and wipe that floor clean, and, in the bathroom closet, I neatly stack my shoes.

Then I run downstairs and use my Kohl’s cash—expires in two days!!—to order a two level shoe rack.

Just like that, the closets (well, the upper shelves will live to be purged another day) are sorted.

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I read books. I bake some cookies. The boyos and I take a ride to the campus and go for a long walk. We rustle up a tasty dinner or two.

And sometimes, during this lovely, time-luxurious weekend, I just meander nonchalantly upstairs, and pull my closet door open, and look.

And ahh, there’s symmetry there, and there’s space, and I’ve hung things in a loosely color-coded sort of way, so there’s a little bit of a palette, too.

Two days ago a closet-viewing made me anxious; now it makes me smile.

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And, oh, of course, there’s a metaphor there, a mirrored framework through which to ponder cluttered mind chambers, and the wisdom of letting go of what’s old and no longer used, to make room for the fresh and the new.

I will chase that metaphor; of course, I will.

But right now, I’m just looking at the bare floor in my closet.

I breathe it in, and then I go downstairs and rejoin Kristin Hannah.

You Don’t [Need to] Bring Me Flowers, Anymore

So next time you’re feeling down, treat yourself to a bunch of blossoming flowers…

Rebel Jones, “Why Do Flowers Make Us Feel So Good?”

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Gray. It’s just gray outside, unless, sometimes, it’s raining and gray. Often when it’s NOT raining and gray, it’s gale-windy and gray.

Then the winds calm down a little, and it rains.

The muddy river looks ready to overflow its banks.

Every other day there are flash flood warnings for creeks in the area. Culverts glug, top-full with sloshing brown water.

The tides recede a little bit. Ah, we say; maybe things are finally starting to dry up.

Then it rains some more.

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It’s a napping kind of week, a pull-the-soft-fuzzy-throw-over-my-shoulders-and-snuggle-up-in-the-reading-chair-with-a-book-that’s-the-mind-equivalent-of-a-Milky-Way-bar (a chocolate for the rainy soul sort of book) kind of week.

And I do that, sometimes, when I can,–I creep into the chair and snuggle up,– but that pesky Life keeps coming up and smacking me upside the head, saying, “Do this!”

Saying…

“Go to work!”

“Throw a load of laundry in!”

“Dinner? Think fixing dinner might be a good idea? Huh?????”

I stick out my lower lip; I say, “Don’t wanna!” (Abandon all hope of maturity, all ye who co-exist here…)

But Life has a highly effective partner: Guilt.

Guilt smacks me up the OTHER side of the head, and says, “Move.”

Sighing, persecuted, weary, I move.

It’s a good thing this was Rotary Roses week.

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On Tuesday, just before leaving time, the office door opened and in came the freshest, brightest breath of air: Missy B with two dozen Rotary roses. Suddenly the hovering gray cloud lifted.

Missy relates to the world positively. She finds the tiny sliver of goodness in the most woeful situation; she needles that sliver out, puts it in the sunlight, and celebrates it. (I swear that, if she watered that little goodness nugget, it would grow into a hearty happiness plant. Such is Missy’s power.)

It is very, very difficult to be gloomy around Missy, and also we had doughnuts from Bowl 4 Kids Sake, so by the time Missy left, I was a little buzzed up and seeing the world in a much brighter way.

And then there were the roses, one dozen for work, one dozen for home. They come in those long white boxes with a plastic picture window in the front, and I could see the rainbow of blooms,—pink, lavender, yellow, red, a dusty kind of in between pink. [When I was little, the GC Murphy Store in downtown Fredonia had a glass and oak candy counter. Inside the glass cage, reachable only by the very lucky person working behind it, were these drop candies. I think they were coconut filled, and they came in exactly the same colors as these roses do.

So pretty. I lusted after those coconut drops, even though, at that un-discerning age, I was not a fan of coconut. (Times have changed.)]

And now these roses…they satisfy a craving so similar to a yearning sweet tooth.

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I pull a vase out of the work kitchen cupboard, fill it with water, get a scissors. I trim twelve perfect, fragrant roses, avoiding some thorns, and fill the vase. Tomorrow, when I come in, the skies may be gray, but I will be greeted by fresh-cut roses.

I pack up for the day, tuck the other box of roses under my arm, and head home. There, I decide to divide the roses into clutches of four; I put them in three thick little milk bottles, and bunch them together on the dining room sideboard.

Take THAT, gray skies.

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There’s SCIENCE behind this. Having fresh-cut flowers in the house, Laura Berry writes in “The health benefits of fresh-cut flowers you need to know about” (bhg.com.au), increases our sense of well-being and reduces stress. When there are flowers in a vase, the people around those flowers are calmer.

All of this is documented fact, proven by studies at no less an august institution than Harvard University.

Berry says that, after a few days of co-existing with flowers, people in one study reported feeling less negative. Others noted they felt greater compassion, had increased energy, and were happier.

People living with fresh flowers felt a greater enthusiasm about doing their work,—professional or home-conjured.

Other studies replicated the finding that flowers in a vase reduce stress in the body.

The flowers, notes Berry, don’t have to be pricey. They could be backyard daffodils or sprays of forsythia, blithely arranged.

They could be a bunch of supermarket blossoms, bought on clearance. Trimmed and pruned, those look beautiful, too.

Hand-picked, sale-sourced, or wild plunge,—doesn’t matter. ANY kind of flowers have the very real power to uplift. (Small wonder that we bring flowers to sick people, and to people in grief.)

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At this time of year, when I was a child, we would have great vases of lilacs in the house. The smell of lilacs meant spring, and release, an unbinding of winter’s straps and zippers and thick, knitted constraints.

We had tulips, too, and sometimes daffodils. I don’t recall ever seeing hothouse flowers at home until I evolved into the age where important dances meant dates and flowers—wrist corsages; corsages pinned to the fragile fabric just below my shoulder; sometimes, even, a very special colonial bouquet.

Then, flowers were a breathless kind of thing,—there was a wait to see what the He had picked. In the picking was a message.

It could be, “This guy really LIKES you.”

It could be, “This guy’s mother ordered these.”

It could be, “He listened when I told him the color of my dress.”

Opening the fat white box with the florist’s fancy oval sticker was a moment.

Hot house flowers: oh, my!

When I was 17, I thought you only got those when some boy gave them to you.

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People have enjoyed bringing flowers into the spaces they inhabit for a long, long time. There’s an article called “The Ancient History of Flower Arrangements” on bouqs.com; in that article I learn…

• That Egyptians arranged flowers to adorn their homes as far back as 2500 BCE. (Wall carvings bear this out, and it could have been going on for ages before someone thought to carve a wall.)
• The Greeks and Romans grew flowers for ornamental reasons, too. They inclined more toward wreaths and garlands than bouquets in vases, though. They were creative; they’d mix beautiful blooms with acorns, ivy, shiny greens…
• The Chinese also loved floral arrangements. Records show that Chinese homes were brightened by flowers as far back as 200 BCE.
• During the Middle Ages, monks kept the practice of growing flowers alive. They cut and displayed flowers in their churches. And Crusaders came back to Europe with exotic blooms, and the seeds to grow more.
• Ikebana, the art form of arranging flowers, has been woven into Japanese culture for 600 years. Buddhist sages taught that flowers evoked emotions, and that careful attention to asymmetry, color, and minimal blossoms was essential.
• Painting beautiful flower arrangements became a genre unto itself during the Renaissance.
• Victorians were flower-obsessed—the exact opposite of Japan’s minimalism. They were…maximalists? And the Victorians developed a kind of code, a language of flowers. If someone gifted you with flowers, the color and type might carry a subtle (or not so) message.

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How long has it been since you tromped, or applauded one tromping, across a wet football field, clutching a long-stemmed mixed bouquet of fragrant blossoms? Fifty years would be a generous estimate in the World of Pam.

But Thursday night, there I was,—aged and thickened, umbrella shoved in the pocket of my practical blue raincoat,—with my wonderful colleagues Susan and Pam, flower laden, tromping.

The field was football—the game was lacrosse. The occasion was an impassioned thank you for a grant that provided some essential equipment and uniforms for a program that is growing exponentially. (The grant writer, by the way, is 17 years old, detailed and dedicated.)

After the presentation of a lacrosse ball, signed by all the players and encased in a fancy plastic display, and a paperweight made by students at the high school, we shifted our sprays so we could fist-bump each and every team member, and coaches too.

It was a moment saturated with game-night nostalgia: moving and oddly, unexpectedly, fun.

The sun ALMOST came out for that pre-game time. We stayed and watched until the team’s first score, which was the same time that a few sprinkles became something more determined. Then we stacked the floral thank you’s in the back seat and drove on home.

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I rummaged in my pantry cabinet, where vases and cake decorating equipment and picnic supplies are jumbled together on a high top shelf, and I pulled out what must have been a vase from a florist’s arrangement, and I merrily spread, on the kitchen counter, the flowers on their plastic sheath—carnations and lilies and roses; daisy-like blooms; baby’s breath and something green and fuzzily-tight-budded.

I filled the vase and played with mingling the blooms in sets of three, trying to make height and width and sturdyness and slenderness work together pleasingly. When I was satisfied, I put the lacrosse flowers on the dining room table, not too far from their rose-y cousins.

A surfeit of flowers!

A phalanx against the gray.

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There was a time when I believed flowers had to be given to me, that I had to earn them, romantically or otherwise. And then, as a young married person, I came to know a lovely, eccentric, very smart woman, who told me about her early career-girl days in the late 1940’s/early 1950’s.

She lived in a bustling city with five other young women; they had a big, airy flat where they liked to give parties. They cooked exotic meals; they learned to mix fancy, trendy cocktails.

And every week, in turn, one of them brought flowers home.

“We ALWAYS had flowers,” she told me. “You should never wait for someone to give you flowers. Go out and buy them for yourself.”

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I think she was saying that flowers are both prescription medicine and organic magic, something that shouldn’t arrive dependent on another’s whim or generosity.

Flowers are potent, and we ought to give that to OURSELVES, especially when streaks of gray days threaten to ground us in gloom.

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I hope there is sunshine in your week, whether it beams on you from above, or it gently nods in a vase,– sunshine captured in the fragile petals of a beautiful flower.

What’s Happening Before the Moon Hides the Sun

They’re doorways to scientific discoveries. They’ve inspired myths both modern and ancient. And, if not viewed properly, they can cause blindness.

        —“What does a solar eclipse symbolize?”—Rachel Levin (today.usc.edu)

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Does the world get weird when it’s preparing for an eclipse?

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On Monday, at about 1:53 p.m., from where I stand, the moon will pass between the sun and the earth. This will affect people across a swath of North America. For us, the daylight will be sucked away, and a weird, unwarranted nighttime will descend.

At about 4:30 p.m., the moon will slip fully past its celestial counterpart, and the sun will be free again,—free to light the world, to warm the soil, to beckon forth the crops.

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It’s an interesting time for a total solar eclipse. For at least three of the world’s religions, the eclipse takes place at a significant juncture.

Christians celebrate the Easter season, the risen Christ, until Pentecost Sunday, May 19, which takes place 50 days after the resurrection and ten days after Jesus was assumed into heaven, body and soul.  Then ordinary time will begin again, on Monday, May 20^th. But meanwhile, this is the Easter season in Christian churches, and the solar eclipse falls within it.

Jews will celebrate Passover (according to chabad.org) between April 22^nd and April 30^th, remembering the passing by of the Angel of Death when their people were enslaved in Egypt. This celestial event will be a prelude to that celebration.

And for Muslims, the eclipse falls within Ramadan, which began on March 11 and will end on April 10. Laylat el-Qadr, the night that the prophet Mohammed received the first holy words of the Quran, is Saturday, April 6^th. (This, the Internet tells me, is the most sacred night of the year for Muslims.)

Two days later, the moon will hide the sun’s light from a broad swath of North America.

I don’t know about other religions; I bet there are many more significant spring rites of worship. Here in central Ohio, the sun is already coaxing leaves to bud on trees, daffodils to bob, and the splendid magenta flowers to thrust forward on our old magnolias; it’s a time to celebrate the sun, for sure.

It’s coincidental, I am sure, that this celestial event takes place during important religious observances.

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Also, the weather leading up to the eclipse has been just plain weird.

On Tuesday night, after a day and a half of unremitting rain, thunder began crashing, and the tornado warning siren sent us into the basement, books, phones, and flashlights in our hands. We were lucky; the worst of that storm passed by us, but farms and buildings not so far away did not fare so well. And further away, the storm’s jagged edge caused even more serious harm.

And still it rained. And the temperatures dropped. On Thursday, I woke up in the early dark, and snow was eddying. Later, it rained, and the rain turned to sleet, then hail.

Then the sun came out.

Then it rained.

Thursday’s weather, the supermarket cashier said dryly, was kind of a sampler plate of all the effects one can taste in Ohio.

Today, the weather app told me, the rain would be gone, but the skies would be gray. Good, I thought; things can dry out. Swollen waterways can settle down a bit.

But when I woke up, rain, against all sage advice, was pouring downing again.

Weird, weird, weird. Maybe the very air we inhabit senses the celestial event to come, and rises up to do…something.

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I ordered my eclipse glasses, and they are waiting on my computer desk.

Our work hours have been curtailed so we can reach home before the onset.

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It’s been 200 years since a total solar eclipse happened in Ohio. That event took place on June 16, 1806.  In “Fear, awe and Tecumseh: What was life like in Ohio during the 1806 total solar eclipses?” (Sheridan Hendrix, Cincinnati.com), I learn that in 1806…

• Ohio was a very young state (admitted to the Union in 1803);
• Thomas Jefferson was in his fifth year as President;
• Lewis and Clark had reached the Pacific Ocean, turned around, and headed home;
• The National Road, which runs through Zanesville, had been approved;
• Noah Webster published his first American English dictionary;
• The population of Ohio was surging;
• Columbus, though, was not yet the state’s capital.

And also in those days, Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) were trying to unify native tribes. This, Tecumseh thought, was the indigenous people’s only hope of stopping the relentless sweep of white settlers across the surging United States.

He was having trouble accomplishing this goal.

And then William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, mocked the Prophet in an unwise way. He wrote, asking why Tenskwatawa didn’t “…cause the sun to stand still—the moon to alter its course—the rivers cease to flow—or the dead to rise from their graves. If he does these things you may then believe that he has been sent from God.” (Cincinnati.com)

Well, said the Prophet. Okay then. In fifty days, that’s exactly what will happen.

And in fifty days, the total solar eclipse descended, and just the things that Harrison had mockingly proposed occurred.

Tecumseh garnered great credibility, but, still, his plan to unite the tribes ultimately failed.

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Was Tenskwatawa divinely inspired? Who can honestly say? But Hendrix writes that there were scientists in those days who could discern when celestial phenomena were going to happen. They predicted the eclipse.

Eclipse chasers followed these scientists, and the chasers headed toward Ohio. They may have spread the word, and the word they spread may have reached the Prophet.

Or his words, and his accuracy, may have come from another source entirely.

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My dreams lately have been as vivid and unsettled as the weather. Last night, I dreamed that Mark and Jim and I were traveling some place on foot. When we stopped at a lodging for the night, Mark got a phone call. He talked for a long while, then suddenly handed the phone to me, and said, “Say hi to Bob.”

Thinking he meant our nephew, I took the phone, but I did not know the person on the other end. “It’s Bob COATES,” Mark whispered, but I had no idea who Bob Coates might be. And Bob talked in a rumbly low whisper that I couldn’t hear.

“I’m sorry,”I said; “I can’t hear you. Let me give you back to Mark.”

But Mark shook his head and ran away, and I stood there holding the phone, while Bob Coates rumbled unintelligibly on and on.

When I woke up from THAT dream, I was mightily annoyed with my husband.

And I dreamt, too, that right outside our kitchen window was a ledge, and on that ledge were two birds’ nests. Momma birds were hatching over hatchlings in those nests, but, as I stared out at them, one of the unfeathered babies lost its perch and tumbled away.

In the dream we were high up in an apartment building; there was nothing to be done.

I called Mark and Jim to look at the nests, and they did. And then I closed the curtains.

When I opened them again, two red foxes were circling the nests.

There was no way I could help. I closed the curtains and ran off.

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Dreamglossary.com reassures me that dreaming of nests with baby birds is a GOOD thing; it symbolizes joy. (Maybe not for the little guy who plummeted, but still. I’ll take this interpretation.) And unraveling dreams.com says dreaming of foxes can have many different interpretations. They can warn of deceit or manipulation; they can gently suggest I be more adaptable; or they can signal that a major change is coming.

Foxes can also, the site says, be a sign that the dreamer is in need of creative inspiration.

And dreamlibrary.org says that dreaming of unexpected phone calls shows a thirst for change, or a look forward to something major that will be happening. The dreamer, the site suggests, may be searching for something new and exciting, or an opportunity for growth. (For…creative inspiration?)

This week’s dreams are etched in memory, unlike those others that evaporate wispily.

What causes vivid dreams—weather? Dinner? Books and movies?

The atmospheric disruption caused by a coming eclipse of the sun?

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Humans, an article at today.usc.edu (“What does a solar eclipse symbolize?”) tells me, assign ‘profound meaning’ to both the sun and the moon. They were our earliest deities, seen either as partners or opposites. Some cultures labeled one masculine and the other feminine.

When they came together, when there was a solar eclipse, that was seen as a deeply meaningful joining.

In Navajo (or Dine’) culture, for instance, the sun is a father. And when he disappears in the middle of a day, that is a sacred time, a time to stop, to meditate.  

The Great American Eclipse took place in August of 2017. It was not visible in Ohio, although we could have traveled to nearby Kentucky to witness the totality, but it did blanket the entire United States in a band that swept from coast to coast. It was the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump was born during a LUNAR eclipse, and there were those who posited that the solar eclipse signaled the end of his time as president—the sun perhaps, eclipsing the moon.

I haven’t seen any current political interpretations to the coming eclipse.

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And here’s a very odd thing that happened. I was out running errands, and one of them was to drop off a DVD at the John McIntire Library. I parked in the very furthest spot, so as to get just a few extra steps in, and I jog-walked to the entrance. Once there, I followed a family in and put the DVD in the return spot.

I’d noticed a young person sitting on the retaining wall outside the library. She was pretty, well-dressed, unassuming. As I hurried past her, she said, “Wait.”

I stopped and turned.

“Are you my MOTHER?” she asked.

“What?” I said, not because I didn’t hear, but because I didn’t understand.

“Are YOU my MOTHER?” she asked again.

“No,” I told her.

She paused. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ve never been blessed with a daughter.”

She looked infinitely sad, but just said, “Oh.”

“I hope you find her, though,” I said. “I hope you find your mother.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and I went back to the car, strangely troubled. Was she an adoptee who’d arranged to meet her birth mother, someone who never showed? Was some emotional turmoil at work?

*******************************************

But anyway. On Monday, the moon will block the sun. I’ll come home from work early; I’ll put on my solar eclipse glasses, and I’ll carefully see what I can see.

And it might be cloudy in my Ohio corner; there may not be very much to really look at except to experience the darkening and lightening of the sky.

And what does it really mean, anyway? The sun and moon are bound to align like this once every so often, aren’t they? This eclipse is just one of those times, not a portent, not a sign.

It’s just a very interesting scientific thing.

But we of the human persuasion, —well, we look for meaning. And if we want to see, in the period of alignment, a symbol of darkness, and then, if we want to interpret the return to light as a bright and positive thing, what’s to stop us?

Who’s to say it isn’t true that we’ve lived through dark times of illness and war and controversy, of climate disasters and chaos and confusion, but that, against all odds and beliefs, we’re rotating toward a sunlit, happier future?

And what’s to say these weird times heading up to the eclipse might all wrap themselves together in the darkening of the skies, snap themselves up tightly, and evaporate in the return of the warmth of the sun?

By next Tuesday morning, I am sure, my whole life will be refreshingly normal, all weirdness dissolved.

******************

Be careful in your eclipse viewing, if viewing can be done near you. And may its aftermath see us all walking, evermore determinedly, into a lighter, brighter time.

Of Bunnies, and Eggs, and Hammy Feasts

Easter is very important to me. It’s a second chance.

—-Reba McIntire

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We are not dying eggs this year. The local eggs we buy have rich, dark, speckled shells; I doubt they would take well to dye. Anyway, they’re beautiful as they are.

And when we do dye eggs, after the day of display, we put them in the fridge. I intend to make, say, a macaroni salad and chop hard boiled egg into it, but I always forget. And then my frugal soul suffers the pangs of wasted food.

So, no hard-boiled eggs this year. Instead, James suggests we make cutout cookies.

We go through the cookie cutter tin and find a dearth of those that are Easter-themed. There is one bunny-shaped cutter; it was my mother’s—my mother owned it, I think, well before I came along, and so that cutter is old, old, old.

James jumps online and orders a set of Easter cookie cutters. They arrive the next day: there’s a full-body bunny, a bunny head, an egg, a carrot, and a chick.

I start thinking about that: why these symbols for Easter? I know the stories, the folklore, behind St. Nicholas and Valentine hearts. I’m not sure how bunnies came to be the face of Easter, though.

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The Easter Bunny, of course, has no biblical roots, and maybe that’s why we didn’t learn about it in Catholic school, yea, those many years ago. (I did, though, have one teacher whose husband owned a local pharmacy. She brought in the kind of Easter chocolate her husband sold: solid chocolate bunnies bigger than my hand. One for each kid, and no sharing required! That was a reverent moment.) But pagan rites celebrated the rabbit—so prolific in producing offspring, rabbits were an ancient symbol of fertility and new life. A perfect Spring metaphor.

In later days, there’s a tie-in there, between the fecund new life and resurrection.

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Mark, washing dishes as day shades into dusk, is looking out the window over the sink.

“Three rabbits in the yard,” he announces.

Then he says, more darkly, “I hope the neighborhood cats are otherwise occupied.”

Oh, no, I think. Would those feline friends attack the Easter bunny?

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History.com (www.history.com/topics/holidays/easter-symbols) tells me that the Easter bunny myth probably came to the United States in the 1700’s. German families who settled in Pennsylvania brought folk stories of the “Osterhase” with them—stories of a hare who laid eggs. Their children would prepare nests for the Osterhase, and, if their nest was a worthy one, the hare would lay some eggs there.

The custom morphed and spread; firmly attached to Easter celebrations, the nests became baskets. The Osterhase evolved into the Easter Bunny; it still brought eggs, but slowly it came to bring other things, as well: eggs and bunnies made of chocolate, marshmallow Peeps, egg-shaped jellybeans, maybe a little gift of a bunny statue, a deck of cards, or a special necklace…

And kids, in appreciation, left carrots out for the bunny, much like they left milk and cookies for kindly old St. Nick.

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I remember leaving a big old carrot out the night before Easter. When I got up, it would have these strange gouges in it—Easter Bunny chomp marks, my father said.

Later I realized Dad carved those chomps out with a paring knife. He was game to take care of Santa’s milk and cookies on Christmas Eve, but, not being much of a fresh veggie eater, he did not bite the carrots.

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Eggs were another symbol of new life at pagan festivals. This symbol was easily adopted by early Christians, says History.com. The egg represented the tomb.

The chick who pecked its way out echoed Jesus’s emergence.

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Decorating eggs was one of those things I got excited about as a child, something I couldn’t wait to do. We would make the dye with water, food coloring, and vinegar, stirred up in thick old white coffee mugs. An egg would signal whose basket was which. We wrote our names on a boiled egg in waxy crayon, and then lowered the eggs into the mug of choice.

The longer I could stand to leave that egg in the brew, the deeper and more jewel-like the color. My eggs were invariably a fragile pastel; waiting was not my jam.

After most of the eggs—probably two dozen-ish—were colored, my brothers would dump the dyes together, making one mug of a sort of muddy black color. They would save a couple of eggs to lower into that mess, and patiently let them soak until they had some truly ugly Easter eggs.

I don’t believe THOSE eggs ever went into an Easter display. I don’t know quite where they went. (It is possible my brothers took them outside and threw them at each other.)

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People in Europe were decorating eggs as early as the 1200’s. Back then, eggs were forbidden during Lent; by the end of those 40 days, an egg might seem pretty exciting. Decorating the shells might have made them even more so. I’m imagining a scruffy child bounding out of her pallet on Easter 1224, and gleefully snatching up a colorful egg from the carved wooden bowl on the trestle table. I see her tapping the egg to crack the shell, then deftly peeling it away,—throwing the shell fragments into the fire, maybe.

Then she devours that egg with the same kind of glee I’d expend on chocolate.

I do not share that glee, however. While I did like eggs in salad, I never, especially as a child, got the hanging of devouring hard boiled eggs.

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Maybe in memory of the Osterhase and the eggs it stashed in outdoor nests, many organizations still hold Easter egg hunts. Sometimes the organizers use real eggs; sometimes they use those snap-together plastic eggs, which have some kind of treasure or message inside. It’s best if these events can take place outside, but the rolling date of Easter, and the weather in the locale, might prevent this, and kids might be inside-searchers for bunny loot.

And, since Rutherford B. Hayes, who had young children, was president in 1878, the United States White House has sponsored an Easter egg roll. This ritual has kids rolling eggs on the White House lawn, trying to get theirs the furthest without cracking its shell (theweek.com, “The annual Easter Egg Roll, explained.”)

According to Theara Coleman, who writes for The Week, the Easter Bunny first made an Egg Roll appearance in 1969, when one of First Lady Pat Nixon’s staff donned a fluffy white Bunny suit, and hopped out to greet the kids.

The Bunny proved to be much more popular than the President with that audience.

This year, the White House will hold the Egg Roll on Easter Monday, April 1. Teacher-First Lady Jill Biden has settled on an “EGG-ucation” theme, and, in addition to the rolling of eggs, there will be, according to The Hill, a reading nook, a tent with snacks, a zone where kids can practice “physical egg-ucation,” and an area that provides a simulated farm trip. The White House expects 40,000 people to take part.

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History.com says there is no real religious significance to an egg roll. Some folks, though, liken kids rolling the eggs to the angel rolling the rock away from Jesus’s tomb.

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Maybe since we’re ducking tradition by not dying eggs this year, we decide to go old school and have ham, which we order and pick up well before the holiday. In fact, the price is so good that we get two hams: one for Easter, and one to freeze and eat for, oh, the Fourth of July, maybe. That wouldn’t actually be a very traditional meal for Independence Day, but ham is definitely an Easter mainstay.

Again, I start to wonder why, so I go searching for information.

*******************

According to Karla Walsh, whose “Why Do We Eat Ham on Easter? Learn the Story Behind the Tradition,” is on bhg.com, ham was not always a traditional Easter dish. Once, lamb was the meat of choice, both on Easter and at Passover meals. Lambs, of course, were born early in the Spring, and hence, they were slaughtered then, too,—perfect timing for both celebrations.

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When we lived in Mount Vernon, the only roads to get to Zanesville were country roads, and every spring, I delighted in driving by the farm where they had sheep. Early in March, the sheep would start grazing outside, and suddenly, one day, there would be these tiny, springy, snow-white lambs frolicking about.

They jumped!

They bounded!

They dodged each other, playing tag, and they ran back to their mamas, as if seeking praise and approval.

Their placid mothers nodded and chewed, and those limber little lambs went back to their bouncing play.

And then, suddenly, just before Easter break, the lambs would disappear. There might be one or two left, but that joy-filled pasture suddenly felt dull and empty.

Puzzled, I remarked on the sudden absence of those frolicking babies to Mark. He gave me the ‘duh…’ look.

“What?” I said.

“Easter?” He said. “Passover? Lambs?”

My deck creaked, shifting. Those little joy-filled jumpers were…dinner????

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Pigs, on the other hand, were slaughtered in the fall, smoked, and the hams hung in the smokehouse. Maybe, when spring rolled around on some farms, ham was what was left—the beef gone, the surviving chickens needed for the eggs they’d produce. Maybe THOSE farms didn’t have sheep.

Maybe ham evolved into Easter dinner because of a kind of agricultural economy and ecology.

Whatever, ham and stuffed shells and maybe some lovely fresh asparagus will be our family feast this year,…with sugar cookie cutouts to follow.

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Today I will transplant little pots of pansies that a kind woman gave me, and I will mix up the sugar cookie dough to roll out tomorrow. Mark will come home from work at lunch, and, just for an adventure, we’ll drive to Powell, Ohio, where we’ll buy our Easter chocolates and stop at a bookstore.

And I’ll strive for some quiet time this weekend, time to think about the meaning and significance of the Easter celebration, and of the foods we eat, and of the things we do, to mark that meaning.

I like a holiday that is both steeped in tradition and anchored in what the people of this place, this home, want and need. I like the idea that we can be mindful and traditional all at the same time.

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However and whatever you celebrate, I hope this spring brings hope and promise.

Ring Once; Ring Twice; But, Please: Keep Bringing the Mail

Some time ago a man who had been a mail-carrier died. He’d been retired for a while, but the people whose mail he’d once delivered still, and freshly, mourned his loss.

He was a man, I believe, who brought gladness along with the mail. He knew the people whose letters he slid into metal boxes, and he knew the names of their kids, and he celebrated triumphs and suffered tragedies with the families he served.

He also, this man, loved basketball. (I hope he had many years of after-work life to enjoy his passion.) So when he died, his kids asked that mourners bring new basketballs with them to the funeral home.

The line for viewing hours snaked far, far down the sidewalk. And in that line, I am told, hundreds of people carried brand-new basketballs.

After the funeral, the man’s sons drove around to neighborhoods in their father’s little city. And when they saw kids out playing, they would get out of the car, toss them a new basketball, and drive on.

I like to think they were serenaded on their way by the distinctive pocka pock of a basketball hitting the pavement. I like to think the echoes of kids’ excited, gleeful screams followed them, too.

I hope that the neighborhoods where they dropped off the balls were some of the neighborhoods their dad delivered mail—one last delivery, and one last reason to be grateful.

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I heard that story this week, and it struck me how seldom I think about the people who bring the mail to my door, slip it through the mail slot, and go quietly on their way.

I think of our regular mail-carrier, whose name, I think, is Mark, and who always seems to be running. He covers a lot of territory, and he’s always rushing to get it done. Never, though, is he too busy to stop and say hello, or to just smile and wave as he hurries to the next house.

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Last week, amid the few bills that still arrive in paper format and the junk mail and the solicitations from charities and life insurance providers, I plucked two handwritten cards and an unexpected letter from a beloved cousin from the mail pile on the floor. What treasures! I sat right down, opened, and savored.

I thought, then, about writing another post about the beauty and joy sealed into a handwritten missive.

But then I heard the story of that wonderful mail carrier, and I started thinking about the dedicated people who bring those irreplaceable gifts to our homes.

Where would we be without our mail carriers? (What would the pandemic lockdown have been like, for instance, without the daily promise of mail?)

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The people who carry our mail get to know our neighborhoods. Their benign regular presence doesn’t just warm our hearts; sometimes, their presence saves our lives.

When a mail carrier sees something amiss, they generally take steps to solve the problem.

And often those steps are heroic.

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There is, I find, a National Association of Letter Carriers. And each year, this association awards Letter Carriers of the Year honors, showcasing the extraordinary community care that letter carriers exhibit. (You can find a nomination form at www.nalc.org.)

There are hundreds of stories of mail carriers’ heroism and bravery on the site. I read a couple, just to see.

For instance, Phillip Moon, a letter carrier in Amarillo, Texas, saw, from his mail truck, a woman and her two small dogs being attacked by a large, vicious dog. Phillip pulled up, beat off the attacker, and pulled the woman and one of her pups into his truck.

The infuriated attacking dog regrouped, and it rushed the truck, biting the woman’s right leg (the left was already bleeding profusely). It also attacked Phillip, who was on the phone with 911. By then, the victim’s husband had rushed out to join the fray. Within minutes, first responders were on the scene. Animal Control corralled and removed the attacker dog, and EMT’s quickly stabilized the injured woman and rushed her to the hospital.

Phillip drove back to the Post Office, but after work that night, he stopped to see the woman he’d helped; he hoped she was starting to recover from that very traumatic experience.

Medical personnel stopped him; they told him he’d saved the woman’s life TWICE—once when he rescued her from the attack, and again when he got help immediately.

She bled so heavily she lost consciousness in the ambulance; without Phillip’s quick intervention, she would have died.

Phillip, however, didn’t consider himself a hero. He thought about the people he works with, and he said, “Anyone would have done what I did.”

********************

A Western New York story caught my eye, too. Tim Martin, a mail-carrier in the Buffalo-Western New York region, was rounding a corner in his mail truck when he saw a car on fire. A small group was trying, without much success, to quench the flames. Other people were filming the fire on their smart phones.

The fire was creeping toward a house trailer. Tim knew an elderly woman with breathing problems lived there. He asked the onlookers if she was inside the home. Without interrupting their filming, they said, yeah; they thought she was.

The fire now blocked the trailer’s front door. Tim ran to the back and discovered that door was bungee-ed shut. Being slender, though, he was able to shimmy inside, where he found the frightened woman, carrying her dog and searching for shoes.

Tim got both the woman and her dog to safety.

Again, he denied being any kind of hero. “…I’m just a regular guy,” he said. “I was just happy that I could help.”

Tim’s boss begged to differ. He went out and bought Tim a super-hero’s cape.

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…And it’s often mail carriers who notice when things are amiss on their regular routes. If the mail piles up, the people who deliver it take action.

CNN.com offers the story of Kayla Berridge, who’d been delivering mail for four years in Newmarket, Connecticut, when she noticed that mail at one home had not been picked up for four days. Berridge often talked to the fragile elderly woman who lived there, and, concerned, she called 911 for a wellness check.

The police responded immediately, and found the resident on her bedroom floor, pinned beneath a pile of frames and artwork. She’d fallen; when she tried to pull herself up, she launched the avalanche of supplies that knocked her down again.

She’d been stuck for at least three days; she was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration. Left longer, she would not have survived.

Again, a mail-carrier saved a life.

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There are dramatic acts of heroism, and there are quiet everyday examples of connection, and both are important.

I remember the warm and wonderful presence of the mailman we had when I was in high school. He knew us all by name, kept up with our comings and goings, and he might dispense fatherly advice.

Once I had borrowed a tennis jacket from a good friend after a day at the courts; the friend was, as it happens, a boy. When I returned the jacket, I pinned a piece of notepaper to the pocket.

On the paper I wrote simply, “Thank you.”

My friend needed the jacket because he and his family were headed south for a winter’s vacation. While they were in Florida, he sent a postcard in reply.

The mail arrived just about the time school let out, and one day I found that mail-carrier on my front steps. His head was cocked, and his face was contorted, and he was reading my postcard.

“I don’t get THIS,” he said, and he handed me the card. “Is this guy okay? Is he a smart ass?”

I turned the postcard over. The message just said, “You’re welcome.”

I explained the story to that nice man; his face cleared.

“That’s all right then,” he said, and started to whistle as he headed next door.

Maybe I should have been upset that that mail-carrier read my postcard, but instead, he made me feel looked after.

He was the kind of person who, if he, hypothetically, came upon a 15-year-old person on his route who was oh-so-sophisticatedly lighting up a long, slender Virginia Slim cigarette as she chatted with friends under the viaduct on her way home from school, would stop and share a word.

The word would be a vehement one, and he might theoretically wait until that young person had ground the fire out beneath her sneakered foot and headed home.

Satisfied, he’d go on his way. That young person might cringe for a week or so, waiting to see if that mail-carrier would share another word, this time with her parents.

He never did, though. He’d said his piece, and the case, unless she re-opened it by puffing on his route, was closed.

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It takes a village, they say. Mail carriers are an integral part of that village.

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I hadn’t ever articulated this, to myself or otherwise, but they’re an integral part of a nation, too.

Winifred Gallagher, in “A Brief History of the United State Postal Service,” (smithsonianmag.com) writes that good postal delivery affected the birth of a brash young country.

I learned at a young age that Benjamin Franklin established the US Post Office. I didn’t know, though, that he realized how important this was when he was traveling the colonies on the east coast between 1753 and 1774. He saw how long it took a message to get from, say, Philadelphia to New York City.

Franklin pondered, and he proposed improvements. He and the couriers he worked with got the Phillie to NYC delivery time down to a scant 33 hours, and they continued to streamline and innovate after the Post Office of the United States was born in 1775.

According to Gallagher, many citizens of the new republic found the establishment of a post office to be “…the most consequential…function of the new government itself.”

Early in the days of the post office, its leaders charged businesspeople and lawyers hefty fees, which made it possible to deliver the mail of regular people—mail like free newspapers and letters brimming with opinions and happenings—for nothin’. The exchange of information was uncensored, and it made the infant United States what Gallagher calls “…a communications superpower.”

By 1831, the US had twice as many post offices as Britain had, and four times as many post offices as they had in France. Getting the mail to where it needed to be seems to have been an essential part of US character since the get-go, and this resulted in the Pony Express, which extended mail delivery from Missouri to the west coast until the transcontinental railroad was completed, and took over the job, in 1861.

And then there was Rural Free Delivery, a lifeline for farm folk and other people living in isolated areas. Think of the hands who delivered THAT mail in the days before paved roads and motor vehicles.

The Post Office adopted its unofficial motto in 1914. That old familiar saying, “Neither rain nor sleet nor dead of night stays these couriers from their appointed rounds,” was inscribed on a new postal building in New York City that year. And, in those early days of the twentieth century, it was US mail that supported a fledgling aviation industry, says Gallagher, until the late 1920’s, when other customers started to appreciate that mode of travel and delivery, too.

Mail kept service-people in touch with home during World Wars, and, after World War II, the volume of United States mail doubled.

A department of the US government since its inception, in 1970, Congress deemed the Post Office a service unto itself.

The Post Office has struggled financially at many times during United States history; we the people have wailed about the rising costs of postage. And, Gallagher tells us, comedian Jerry Seinfeld recently said, tongue firmly in cheek, that he couldn’t understand how a “…system based on licking, walking and a random number of pennies” is struggling.

But Gallagher, a journalist who wrote the book, How the Post Office Created America, noted how dependent people realized they were on the mail, especially during the lockdown days of COVID.

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I am going to finish my writing here, and then I am going to go attack my email. I have some edited drafts to send out, and I have to arrange a substitute for a meeting I can’t attend tomorrow, and there are articles in my inbox that I’ve been waiting for a chance to read.

But all the while, I’ll have an ear cocked to hear the other mail drop through the slot. Who knows what wonderful things might arrive…a magazine brimming with articles and ideas, a used book ordered last week after reading a recommendation of a new author, a recipe from a Canadian friend—a friend made possible by social media but solidified by an upgrade to snail mail.

“The mail’s here!” James will holler, and we’ll both set aside what we’re doing to examine what’s arrived.

And I’ll remember that it’s not just magic that brought it here. A hard-working person delivered it to my doorstep, which, now I think of it, is maybe a special kind of magic in itself.

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Let me move forward,–in imagination, into that land beyond our ken, the future. Electric cars, in these times, are anachronisms; now travelers sweep down streets in Star Wars-style land speeders. They zoom and hover; they avoid mud and ice and broken branches. They skim happily over piles of sodden leaves.

If a deer jumps out, these crafts are programed to rise and drift above it.

Avatars jump out of phone screens, and whole houses, not just phones, are SMART.

And yet—here is what I see: a mail speeder, covered and ponderous, built a little like a high-tech gypsy cart. Its driver anchors the vehicle at a corner; it hovers there patiently, like a bridled horse, thrumming and vibrating just a little bit.

The driver jumps out, clad in blue-gray short pants and polo shirt (it is a warm day). Feet firmly on the ground, she pulls a bag of lumpy interest out toward her, slings it over one shoulder, and she walks toward the nearest house.

She is a mail carrier, yay, these many years hence. The elderly woman effortlessly pruning her garden bushes with a high tech tool stops her work, peels off her gloves—this elderly person who is, maybe, our great-grandchild!—and chats a moment with the mail carrier before taking the paper mail in her hand and heading for a lawn chair.

There, she’ll sort and read and consider and discard, connected to something else by the messages in her hands.

And connected by the hands that put those messages there, the hands of the mail carrier whose cruiser hovers, whose feet stride on down the pretty street.

Time has moved inexorably on, but we will still, I hope, need those hands to carry our mail.

***********************************

I wish you good news, delivered by people who care.

Catching My Drift is taking this week off.

I look forward to catching up next week!

Fortified by a Brownie, She Re-entered the Fray…

When you are downie, eat a brownie.

   —Anonymous, but found on Pinterest.

******************************************************

It is a cold and sodden night. I am staying with my friend while she recovers from surgery, and we are watching a fascinating documentary (The Pez Outlaw) on, I think, Netflix.

The rain slogs down relentlessly.

So, of course, we are eating brownies.

Sharon has hers with a cheerful dollop of that wonderful whipped cream from a can that needs to be shaken before dispensing. I have just the basic bar. But the brownies came out of the oven maybe 90 minutes ago, and the milk chocolate chips we threw in ooze nicely.

Rainy night, good TV, brownies: comfort needs met.

***************************

Brownies.

I don’t remember a life where brownies weren’t a chocolatey possibility.

***************************

I still have, in my grease-glossed, brittle, handwritten cookbook, my mother’s recipe for brownies. Those brownies filled a large cookie sheet. They tended to be a little dry; my mother had her generation’s suspicion of undercooked food, so she, maybe, left them in the oven a titch longer than necessary. The edges were hard and crunchy; the best piece had a bit of edge crunch and a soft, chewy middle.

Often, Mom would spread a thick layer of vanilla buttercream frosting over the trayful of brownies and then cut them, and the contrast between the sweet, light frosting and the dark, chewy chocolate was wonderful.

Back in my childhood days, when money was tight and my mother was called upon to be a creative cook, we never had anything as extravagant as baker’s chocolate in the house. In the front of her World War Two-vintage Betty Crocker Cookbook, Mom often sought a suggestion from a list of substitutions. This told her, for instance, how much vegetable shortening to melt and mix with how many tablespoons of Hershey’s cocoa and then use in recipes that called for baker’s chocolate. 

I think she must have converted that for use in her brownie recipe, which calls for cocoa and shortening, melted together.

*******************************

That big cookie sheet full of brownies was necessary for a hungry family of seven; some days, the tray would be scraped clean within six hours. It wasn’t until middle school that I learned about other ways of making brownies,–smaller batches, different chocolate.

Add-ins.

Toppings.

Mixes versus made-from-scratch.

The pursuit of the ultimate brownie is a highly individual, and, I believe, a lifelong, quest. From middle school on, I made brownies my mission.

********************************

Once an elderly couple we loved had dinner with us. We were living in our law school lodgings—a single-wide trailer—and the challenge was to make the cramped kitchen work. I resorted, in those days, to lots of shortcuts. So, I had baked up a brownie mix. There was half a bag of miniature M&M’s in the cupboard, and I threw those into the chocolate-y batter with a handful of semi-sweet chips.

For dessert, we served a scoop of ice cream on top of a brownie, all drizzled with caramel sauce.

Our elderly gentleman visitor waved his treat away. (Jim’s eyes lit up, and he gestured enthusiastically for the plate to come his way.)

“Too sweet for ME,” the gent said. “I can’t eat all that.” (“I can!” mouthed Jim.)

The gent hooked a thumb at his wife. “I’ll just have a bite of HERS.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Perhaps this scenario had played out before.

The gent snaked his fork over to the good lady’s plate, and he carved off a bite of brownie to pop into his mouth.

“Oh,” he said, as if surprised. “That’s pretty tasty.”

And he proceeded, of course, to eat his wife’s entire brownie sundae.

***********************************

When I got our lady guest another sundae, her husband snorted.

“Having SECONDS, are you?” he said. “I can’t eat that much.”

**********************************

Brownies. The dessert that entices even the non-sweetie eater.

************************************

Later, on that rainy night, I crawl into bed, pull the soft duvet up to my chin, turn on the reading lamp. And I wonder. Who invented brownies, anyway?

I crawl back out of the warm nest and over to my laptop. I go searching to find out.

************************************

“A Brief History of the Brownie: a Quintessentially American, Globally Loved, Dessert,” by Aarudshu Agraval, has answers. (I find the article on cadburydessertscorner.com)

The treat’s name, somehow, comes from Palmer Cox’s stories about brownies, little sprites who help around the house whilst its other inhabitants sleep. In return, the creatures expect to be fed. Householders leave them, for instance, bread and bowls of milk.

If the feeding doesn’t happen, the brownies might get impish.

(How does that translate into the name of a chocolate-y sweet treat? I will tell you: I don’t know.)

There are theories, Agraval says, about how brownies-the-chocolate-bar-cookies originated. Here are the top contenders.

1. A Bangor, Maine, cook forgot (in the late 1800’s) to put baking powder in her chocolate cake batter. The result was a flat, disappointing dessert. The cook, though, was undeterred; she cut the cake into bars and boldly served them, intimating that yes; this is exactly how I meant these treats to emerge.

And the people who et ‘em, liked ‘em.

• B. Or…it might be true that a chef added a little too much melted chocolate into the cookie batter, which had to be poured, rather than scooped, into the tray.

The result was a bar cookie.

Again, rave reviews.

• C. Or…a cluster of cooks, some people believe, planned to make a cake. They didn’t, though, have enough flour. They used what they had. The result, as they say, was brownies.

• D (And maybe this is D for ‘definitive’…) Bertha Palmer, whose hubby owned Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel, was asked, in 1893, to design a special lady’s dessert for the World Columbian Exhibition. Bertha got together with the hotel’s chefs. She had some specifications: she wanted the dessert to be “smaller than a cake,” and, “more convenient to eat than a pie slice.”

The chefs conferred, and they made brownies, a dessert that we would instantly recognize today. They added walnuts, and drizzled apricot sauce on top. Bertha, and her friends, and the ladies at the luncheon, were happy.

************************************

The first published brownie recipe, Agraval maintains, was in Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cookbook of 1896. BUT—there was NO chocolate in this recipe!

Ms. Farmer corrected that lack in her cookbook’s 1906 update. In that edition, the erstwhile “vanilla” brownies were called Blondies. And the BROWNIE recipe called for chocolate.

Things, as we say, were now as they SHOULD be.

***************************************

And here we are, over a hundred years later.

***********************************

Brownies are versatile, to be sure. I follow a wonderful cooking blog called Joana’s World (https://joanas-world.com/). This week, a brownie recipe, Chewy Brownie III, landed in my email inbox, and I thought to check Joana’s site and see how many brownie variations she has shared.

There are twelve brownie recipes on Joana’s World. Two are for caramel brownies. There’s an heirloom recipe she calls ‘Granny’s Brownies,’ and there’s a brownie-meets-cheesecake concoction. I think that the boyos would really like the brownie with raspberry fudge. There’s a marshmallow brownie and a chewy brownie, and there’s a recipe for a brownie bread pudding.

Brownies, it is clear, exist in the eye, and the imagination, of the beholder…and of the kitchen dreamer. We have not yet come close to reaching the boundary of brownie possibilities.

*************************************

The day after the rainstorm dawns bright, beautiful, and cold. While Sharon rests, I drive to meet my friend Deb at a cute little coffee shop. Swirling scents—roasting coffee, buttery baking blends,—twine around our arms, drawing us in.

Deb orders tea and a raspberry cloud—a sort of scone-y muffin top. I order a decaf Americano and, of course, a brownie.

This brownie is at least as big as the palm of my hand, and it is studded with sea salt.

And it is SO good. It is fudgy and soft in the middle, and Deb and I agree that we tend to overbake our brownies. When the recipe says, “Remove from oven after 20 minutes,” I need to do just that. (One of the articles about brownies I read last night notes that brownies continue baking once removed from the oven. So I might have to take them out a little early, even, to get this rich, melty, fudginess. And I so love this almost oozing texture.)

The salty contrast is amazing.

We talk about our go-to brownie recipes. (Mine are Tollhouse Double Chocolate Brownies (https://www.food.com/recipe/nestle-toll-house-double-chocolate-brownies-19441) and Hersheys’ Deep Dish Brownies (www.hersheyland.com/recipes/deep-dish-brownies.html).

Brownies are not a terribly hard dish to make, but, even so, sometimes a mix is wonderful. Deb says that, if she’s going to use a mix, she splurges and gets Ghiradelli.

We talk about adding nuts and chips and M&M’s.

It’s like, as we talk, that we are floating on chocolate infused breezes. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, we say, and I pop a salty, melting, cocoa-enriched bite into my mouth.

Ahhhhhhh.

Brownies.

***********************************

Oh, there are serious things to be thinking about. There are big crises and small dramas and there are answers only we can give, and, sure as shootin’, we’d better suit up and give ‘em.

An indulgent treat is not going to change any of that dire STUFF.

But…wait a minute. Can it hurt?

Can it hurt to take a moment to savor a rich, lush, chocolatey bite of goodness before we re-enter the fray?

Maybe we’ll go back in fortified, comforted, bolstered.

Maybe we’ll just know that someone cared enough to bake us a brownie.

And maybe we’ll just feel, for a moment, that we’re completely indulged.

**************************************

Maybe sometimes, we just NEED a brownie.

*************************************

At this moment, though, after this bout of brownie-spiked contemplation and experimentation, I think I have to call a halt. Brownies are wonderful, magical things: but sometimes, at least a few times, (all right: I think this is the first time), I’ve had enough.

Once Again, “I Assemble,” He Says

I don’t always hit exquisite high notes with gifts on Valentines Day…many years I just grab cards and some kind of favorite candy and give those to the boyos. That’s okay, of course, although not exactly exciting.

But this year, I feel like I nailed it.

I got Mark a heart-shaped box full of heart-shaped beef jerky bites. The bites had little slogans on them—“Want to meat up later?”—just like those traditional conversation hearts. 

“No way!” said Mark when he pulled the dainty little cardboard heart from its gift bag. I knew he was pleased when he positioned the heart, just so, on the table, and took pictures to send off to other meat-loving men.

And then, I had seen an ad for a Lego-type model I could get, customized, for Jim. I uploaded a photo of Jim into the company’s app, and they morphed that into Lego Jim. They sent me a photo of the prototype to approve, and a few days later, Lego Jim arrived in the mail.

I wrapped that up snugly in shabby-chic brown paper and tied a red bow on it.

Jim opened it on Valentine’s Day morning, and stared at it, turning it in his hand.

“Wait,” he said. “Is that ME?”

I nodded.

There was a pause.

Then, “I LIKE it,” he said.

He assembled the little guy and stationed it in the basement, standing guard by his little clear plastic cases of Lego characters.

*********************************

There are things, when my kids were young, that I came to believe would be part of my life forever. Constant He-Man, Master of the Universe episodes was one.

Transformers clunking around were another.

And then one day, the kid says, “I’m tired of this,” or, “These are dumb.”

The toys or the episodes disappear, fade away.

Sometimes, they never come back.

*********************************

Not so Legos, though. About a year ago, Jim’s interest in Legos rekindled. Now he has a man-cave full of streetscapes and earth-bound vehicles, as well as things that fly into space and beyond. He has purchased display cases, and Lego sets vie for importance with his books, DVD’s, and video games.

He plans for super purchases, for maybe getting a really big set once he saves up enough cash. (Because Legos are pricey. Yee dawgies.)

This reconnection to a beloved childhood toy snapped into place as easily as…well, as easily as one Lego brick onto another. And why not? Plenty of adults love Legos, and time spent assembling a Lego creation is time NOT spent in front of a screen.

****************************

I knew that Lego came from Denmark, but I didn’t really know the whole story, so I got on the official website (https://www.lego.com/en-us/history), where I watched a charming video about Ole and Gerhardt Kristiansen, father and son, in Billund, Denmark, in the early 1900’s. Ole was a skilled carpenter; he turned his avocation into a business, hiring journeymen, and turning out beautiful, admired products,—furniture and the like.

And then came the Great Depression. One by one, orders faded away, and Ole let his workers go, until he worked alone, and then, finally, there was not enough work even for him. After months of searching for a solution, he hit upon the idea of making wooden toys.

His first toys were pull toys, ducks on strings, or trucks the size of Tonkas, substantial things a kid could push around. But after he saw a particular kind of press, after he brought home several small wooden bricks that press churned out, the idea for Legos blossomed in his mind.

Ole’s son Gerhardt joined him in the business, which they named “Lego,” a blend of the words Leg Godt, which, in Danish, means “Play well.”

And, in a bit of synchronicity, “lego,” in Latin, means “I assemble.”

From a home business to an international enterprise, complete with Legolands that zillions of people visit yearly…THAT was quite a journey, fueled by incredible creativity, determined drive, and a belief in things well-made.

Ole and Gerhardt envisioned their toys as sources of unlimited possibilities for boys AND girls; sources of stimulating, harmonious play; toys that would jumpstart imagination and creativity.

They thought Lego would appeal to all ages, too.

They were spot on, and their descendants are still in the business.

It’s a pretty great story.

***********************

Once, when Jim was little, we had a neighbor family with three wonderful girls. They were all very different: the oldest ultra-feminine and bookish, the youngest adorable and socially gifted. Leslie, the middle kid, was a thinker and a do-er, and she loved Legos. Because we always had huge bins of them somewhere in or near our living room, she liked to come over and play.

She built amazing things from Legos. But she had a major complaint.

“Girl Legos,” she said, “are stupid.”

This was maybe the early 1990’s, and she was right: girl Legos presupposed that the hands that snapped them together weren’t terribly…well, handy. Girl Legos had two or three main pieces, rather than an array of little bricks.

There was a lot of pink in play, too.

Maybe the toy-makers thought girls would rather use the finished project for imaginative play than build the house or car or whatever themselves.

If so, they were very wrong.

In fact, Leslie wrote and told them so.

I notice that now there is no real distinction between “boy Legos” and “girl Legos,” and that sets one might suppose appeal more to females are just as intricate as any others.

I figure that’s Leslie’s doing.

**************************

Because Matt and Jim are 14 years apart, I feel like we experienced almost two generations of toys between them. Matt, in grown-up life a skilled carpenter, builder, and fixer of most things, was always drawn to Legos.

When Matt was little, Legos came with an instruction booklet that showed how to build the pictured model. Then, in the back, it suggested other structures that the kid could build. One could buy loose bricks, too, if I recall correctly, and the builder kid could just take off, imagination-wise.

Fast forward 18 years or so, when James first discovered Legos. By then, there were themed-Lego sets. The first I recall is Vikings. I remember James getting a Lego Viking ship when he was a pretty young guy—four, maybe, or five,—and the model was quite a challenge to assemble. In fact, he got it when we were visiting my Aunt Dot and my cousin Kathy (James’ godmother), and it took the three of us, the set spread out on the dining room table, instructions unfolded flat and smooth—it took the three of us women over an hour to get things assembled to the satisfaction of the young autocrat to whom the Legos belonged.

And there were no alternate suggestions for builds by then, either. A Viking ship was a Viking ship. If you wanted another Viking model, it was suggested that you buy another set.

Well, a kid could always build whatever he wanted, which Jim did, dumping all his bricks into a big bin, sometimes helped and encouraged by his big brother. They made some pretty awesome Lego structures, the two of them, both together and separately. (Quite often, the dad got involved, too.)

**************************

Of course, cleaning up the Legos bricks—every single Lego brick—was the thing. Many of us parents had an auto-refrain that went like this: “Put those LEGOS into the BIN!” You could just pull a string and we’d bellow those words, four or fifteen times a day.

And, if a Lego brick got missed, and a barefoot parent stepped upon it…oh, the exquisite pain of tender sole of foot mashed into unyielding Lego.

************************

Jim’s big bin of Legos traveled with us from house to house, city to city, until finally,– about eight years ago, maybe,–he must have decided he was just too darned old for those…toys, darn it.

He took the bin to Half Price Books, and he sold the whole thing, reinvesting the money in books and films and video games…pursuits a grownup can proudly claim.

But just nine months or so ago, the clarion call of Lego sounded, and Jim realized that, as Ole and Gerhardt envisioned, the little bricks are not just the domain of children.

Legos are for everyone.

And so the collecting, once again, commenced.

***********************

We like to go to the annual “Think Outside the Brick: The Creative Art of Lego” exhibition at the Columbus, Ohio, Museum of Art. The Ohio LUG (Lego Users Group) helps to put this on. They create a model of the city, with architecture that’s easy to recognize; with favorite restaurants, brick-built parks, and a river that flows through.

The exhibit fills a large room, and we inch around the display, exclaiming. There’s a pizzeria we know; there’s an ambulance speeding down Broad Street. High on top of a recognizable, iconic skyscraper, Lego Batman surveys the city.

Every year, the display is a little different; we look forward to spending a Sunday afternoon, studying it.

(You can find more information here: http://www.columbusmuseum.org)

*************************

This past Christmas, many of my friends bought Lego bouquets for their grown-up daughters, who unwrapped the unique sets and enjoyed putting them together, and then displaying them. My mom-friends had pictures on their phones of those sets, which were, truly, pretty amazing.

And this past Sunday, paging through the Times, I saw an interview with Isabela Merced, who loves building Legos. “It’s something that’s nice to do on a Sunday that keeps me from staring at my phone all day,” she said.

(Being a cultural ignoramus, I had no idea who Merced is. I looked her up on IMDb.com, and discovered she is famous for acting in such films as Transformers: the Last Knight, and Dora and the Lost City of Gold. She starred in a Nickelodeon series, too, and first acted on Broadway in “Evita” at age 10. She was born in Cleveland, so she’s a good Ohio girl, and, at this writing, all of 23 years old.)

Also in the Times, there was a photo of a pediatric clinic in Tribeca; the outside was painted to look like Legos.

From the mind of a brilliant Danish man to ubiquity in less than one hundred years: it’s really pretty amazing.

******************************

James is busy redesigning his basement space so he has room to build, store, and display his Lego creations. As he works, he may utter quotes from the first Lego Movie.

“Honey,” he might mutter, “where are my paaaaaaaaants?”

Or, depending on that day’s dinner menu, he could carol, “It’s Taco Tuesday!”

Many, many people know exactly what he’s talking about when they hear those lines.

****************************

I’m glad Legos have returned. They are quirky, clever, as simple as a face with two dot-eyes and a semi-circle mouth, as complex as a cantilevered tower standing bold against a basement wall skyscape. They’re a symbol of something, Legos are,…of ingenuity, of the essential goodness of maker-ing, of the lasting resonance of a darned good idea.

I missed Legos without knowing I missed them. I’m awfully glad they’re back.

*******************************

Here’s the link, if you’re curious, for the custom Lego figures: https://mycustombrickfigures.com/?syclid=f3915367-89ab-41d6-86d9-af3235f1e8f0

That Being There Thing

“How long,” Maddie asked, “has it BEEN since I’ve seen you?”

I had to think about that for a long minute.

“I think it’s been eight years,” I said.

“Maybe ten,” said Shayne, who is Maddie’s mama and my godchild.

***********************

We were gathered on the night before Maddie’s quinceanara, eating burgers and pizza and catching up. Shayne’s house was bustling,–with two of my brothers and their families, with my niece Meg and her daughters Kirsten and Mia, and, of course, with Shayne’s husband, Noel, and their kids, Gabrielle and Patrick and Maddie. Noel’s sister Maria was there, and his youngest brother Luis, and his nephew Guillermo with his wife and kids.

It felt odd, a little otherworldly, to be gathered in person.

Kind of: Oh, I remember this! Déjà vu: people used to gather in houses, eat together, play games, talk and laugh and celebrate.

**************************

The Foundation I work for is connected to a statewide organization that supports and informs all kinds of philanthropy. I started working there deep into COVID; all of the meetings that state organization convened were via Zoom.

At first, I thought, “Oh, gosh. This is nothing like being all together.”

But then I kind of caught the rhythm.

And then I got to really like remote meetings.

Just think: no commute time.

No one has to arrange a meeting space, provide water bottles and granola bars.

Everyone can see each other—unless, of course, one of us turns the video off, allowing us to eat or check our phone or do something else we’d prefer not to have caught on camera. We can mute ourselves and walk away, take a rest break, get our steps in, and the meeting continues without interruption or consternation.

And when the meeting is over, there I am, at my desk. Click. Ping. Onto the grant I was reading, or the letter I was writing, before someone let me into the Zoom meeting.

I quickly decided Zoom meetings were very satisfying. I could, kind of, be there without…being there.

****************************

COVID is not over, of course; it’s still out there, lurking, but it seems, now, more manageable. And the state organization is slowly returning to face-to-face meetings at least part of the time.

The first time I got an invitation to a regional meeting that was—gasp—almost two hours away, I recoiled. That would be THREE AND A HALF HOURS of driving for a one hour meeting! Think of all I wouldn’t accomplish because I was away from the office for that chunk of time…and truly, four point five hours away, when the workday is five hours long, does make a dent.

I sent a whiny email to the facilitator, and she arranged a hybrid meeting. Two of us from far-ish flung sites attended that way.

And it was a worthwhile meeting; I made some notes and had some good leads to follow up on, things that might make certain practices easier or more effective. And, when I clicked “Leave,” there I was, at my desk.

On to the next task! I thought, happily.

****************************

But now I am thinking about the energy that must have been around that table. People who had only ever seen each other on a computer screen were meeting…possibly bonding over unexpected things in common. On Zoom, there is seldom time for chitchat—no, “Oh, you have dogs?” or, “What’s the best book you’ve read lately?” or “Did you watch For All Mankind?”

Remotely, we appreciate people for the value they bring to the professional table, but we don’t get to know them as people.

Is getting to know remote colleagues as PEOPLE necessary to your job? sneers the left-shoulder-nasty-voice into my ear.

And, well,—maybe not. Maybe not necessary.

But maybe there’s a depth of understanding and empathy I miss remotely.

Maybe next time, I’ll make the drive.

Be there.

*********************************

It’s easy to blame COVID for just about everything—supply chain issues, construction delays, a tendency toward isolation. But this morning, I came across “A door to abuse,” by David Leonhart in a New York Times newsletter that regularly lands in my inbox. Leonhart looks at the effect of social media and smart phone use on, particularly, children and young people.

He writes, “Feelings of loneliness and sadness began rising more than a decade ago, around the same time that smartphones and social media became ubiquitous.”

And that pauses me, mid-step.

Does my smart phone take the place of really being there?

Does keeping up on Facebook take the place of catching up in person?

*****************************

I remember sitting with Mark and Jim, watching TV, right about the time Leonhart refers to. A commercial aired: a trendily dressed, handsome man of indeterminate age waved his state-of-the-art phone and intoned, “Remember when we used our phones to make PHONE CALLS?”

‘What????” I snorted at that bad man. “I STILL use my phone to make calls! That’s why I HAVE a phone!”

Mark and Jim nodded, obligingly, but they weren’t at all perturbed.

Fast forward to now, and it is true that I have had two or three phone calls this week, but I have sent or received probably hundreds of texts.

And the calls were to places like the pharmacy or to some job-related voice much more often than they were to a person whose voice I just like to hear.

Texting, which has so many advantages, is how I keep in touch these days.

I can answer a text when my frightfully busy schedule allows. And I don’t have to be there when it arrives.

*********************************

The National Institute of Health supported a study called “Being There: a Qualitative Study of What Veterans in Depression Want in Social Support.” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7352022/) The authors talked with thirty patients at a Veterans Health Administration Center to try to determine whether having someone who’d be there made a difference to the patients’ health.

The study defines ‘being there’ in three ways (and I’m quoting here):

• Physical proximity
• Frequent and responsive contact
• Perceived availability

It’s not surprising that they concluded that responsive social relationships were very important to the wellness of people experiencing depression.

It did bring me up a little, though, to read what the barriers to making the necessary social connections were. Patients feared being a burden. They didn’t want their honest talk of depression to sink the gossamer balloon of happy, happy conversation—who wants to be a downer? And the patients felt they were responsible for solving their own problems.

I don’t want to dump my problems on them. All those problems are my own fault, anyway.

***********************************

Physical proximity. If I’m there, and if I am present, I might see changes in the person I care about, and then we might be able to talk about it. There’s a confluence here: I need to be THERE, and I need to be PRESENT.

A colleague and I were just talking about going to a restaurant and watching tables of connected people ignore each other, staring at their phones, tapping out texts, laughing at videos. We can be two feet away; we can be physically there; and we can not be present.

Of course we’re all distracted. But sometimes I need to push that all away and really, deeply listen.

When we’re present, too, we notice the details—the hair so nicely done, or the lack of a jacket on a cold day; the sparkle in an eye, or the jeans that need a good wash. There might be a quaver in a voice; our person might be yawning and drooping.

Physical proximity, if we’re aware inside it, is an important way to be there.

******************************

We’re such a moving, global community, though. I can’t always be on site. But I can be in regular touch, and I can be responsive.

If someone says, “I’m worried,” I need to find out why instead of saying, “You’re tough. You’ll be fine. You always are!”

If someone says, “I am so excited,” I need to celebrate with them, not say, “Oh, yeah. That’s fun. I did that like, ten years ago. You’ll enjoy it.”

If someone is grieving, I need to be there with them. I need to tell them that this really sucks, not remind them of my own losses and how I’ve come through just fine.

****************************

And I need to be sure the other person knows they can reach out. I may have to set some limits…I might have to say, “Call me any afternoon after 4:00,” if there are good solid reasons I can’t talk before then. But the sense that, if there’s an emergency, call ANY time,–that should be clear.

****************************

I get a little tense thinking about all this. I so want to be the kind of person who is there.

But it really can be a lot of work. The lazy lounger inside my head is sighing dramatically.

****************************

And maybe I need to understand what other people mean when they want us to be there. Years ago, a single friend had a surgery that required, for the first week or so, people to come and stay with her.

With those folks on hand, she dared a little more than she would have, alone and recovering. She got up and made coffee. She threw a load of wash in. She gingerly stood up and walked each hour.

Alone, she would have been afraid to do those things, but with trusted people on hand, she pushed herself. She believed she healed more quickly because of it.

What she didn’t need, she said, was constant conversation. Her valiant ones would sit wherever she sat, struggle to come up with interesting topics to talk about, watch her with eagle eyes to make sure she wasn’t bored.

I would have loved to be bored, my friend remembered. I wanted to just fall asleep on the couch without apologizing.

The helpful people didn’t realize they were being intrusive. My friend didn’t have the words to tell them to be quiet.

I guess being there means plugging that perceptive wire in to a really strong source, to listen in all kinds of ways.

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Maybe we all need to figure out how we can best be there. I am not at all good with upset stomachs, for instance; Mark was always the hero, the cleaner-upper, when the kids had vomit attacks. (I was in the bathroom, sympathy-puking.)

I might want to be there for a dear one with the stomach flu, but that is not my super power.

I can send notes and cards, though. I can make calls and mail letters.

And I can bake, and I can bring books or magazines. I can listen. I can run to the supermarket, and I can keep the pantry shelves stocked.

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And when it’s time to shut up and go home, I can do that, too.

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I have spent a lot of time, in the past five years, curled up by the fire, reading a book, firmly in my happy place. I am not, not ever, going to stop doing that.

But I am going to trade my fuzzy slippers for my new sneakers much more often, and I am going to push myself up and out—to go to the meeting, to shop at the store, to attend the presentation.

To travel to see people.

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In the ten years since I’d seen my grand niece Maddie, she grew from a whimsical child to a poised young woman. I wish I had been there to witness some of the changes.

But I can’t undo the times I thought, “Next year…”, and I can’t un-COVID the travel-ban years.

What I can do is stretch my taut, underused travel muscles.

What I can do is make the effort, in whatever way, shape, or form is appropriate, to be there now.