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Tin’s love of going to the playground knows no bounds – all you have to do is say park and he brings you his shoes. And it’s at the playground where I notice that every day that ticks by he grows, develops, acquires, learns and all of this is about him pushing off of me to gain entry to these thresholds. “Need Mommy’s help?” – a resounding “NOOOOOOO.” Every once in a while he reaches out for my hand, briefly, just to get to the next ledge but then quickly he drops me like a hot potato. While he is suspended from the monkey bars, he makes sure I am not holding him (so I hide that I am).

How come at his age he doesn’t know that one day I will no longer be here and I will be who he misses the most?

The Afternoon Sun

This room, how well I know it.
Now they’re renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices. The whole house has become
an office building for agents, businessmen, companies.
This room, how familiar it is.
The couch was here, near the door,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right -no, opposite- a wardrobe with a mirror.
In the middle the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
Beside the window the bed
where we made love so many times.
They must still be around somewhere, those old things.
Beside the window the bed;
the afternoon sun used to touch half of it.
. . . One afternoon at four o’clock we separated
for a week only . . . And then-
that week became forever.

Constantine P. Cavafy

We made a birthday card for a friend who is coping with the end of a relationship while musing on her mid life arrival. Here are some of the quotes harkening to the authors we read from on Thanksgiving that we put on her card – another friend of hers called it a sad card. Really? Then you view life as sad.

“Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.”  Wallace Stegner

“Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.” Virginia Woolf

“The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” Elizabeth Bishop

“Love is my religion – I could die for it.” John Keats

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.” Robert Frost

“Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.” Langston Hughes

“When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long.” Constantine Peter Cavafy

“Do not regret growing older.  It is a privilege denied to many.”  ~Author Unknown

Last night I got to cuddle up to some Advil Cold & Sinus and a horrific case of acid reflux, but that was only after having been dragged down the front stairs early in the morning by Loca the cabin fever dog and in the mid afternoon falling on my other knee in Boot Camp (actually slamming my full body weight onto my left knee cap). By the time I made it to bed, I was bedraggled and sore beyond means not to mention coughing and sniffling and generally as miserable as a person could be.

The only light at the end of last night’s tunnel was it was Saturday night and not Sunday. Oh thank heaven for the little things.

I knew a little boy who was about to get a dog and he told me one day, “We’re getting a laboratory retriever!” There was something so wonderful about that I didn’t want to correct him. So when Tin started calling butterflies “bagash” we sort of just went along with it because he doesn’t just say “bagash” he says BAGASH with such enthusiasm and delight for the butterfly that it deserves to be left intact, simply BAGASH.

My neighbor is holding the annual Bayou Blunderbus and well, we are just missing the whole thing because they are dressing up like Pilgrims and Indians and floating down the bayou and winding up in front of our house with a roaring fire and lots of food. But we have things to do. For one thing, after not being on Tin’s schedule for Thanksgiving we are back to strict schedule observance and so while they are trotting down the bayou about to put their canoes in, we’re just getting back from a romp in the park and then a snack and then some play and then some lunch – so much for adult romping.

Next is the canoes which arrived complete with teepees attached and the libations and laughter, but again, it’s lunch time so we are looking out the window at the festivities and making sure Tin eats all his tamales and zucchini.

The plants are getting watered, the windows being cleaned, the house vacuumed, laundry is being done, errands are being run, a child is being raised, and outside the adults continue to act like it is the end of the world and carry on in such a way as to make a couple who looked to be tourists stop and take photographs of the revelry.

The fire is still burning and Tin is up from his nap eating his jambalaya and broccoli and pears. Happy as a clam, completely oblivious to the more pronounced laughter, and the glowing red of the fire embers, and the fact that these adults have been walloping up a good time since mid morning.

Whatyagonnado?

Yesterday we were sitting outside under blue skies and short sleeved warmth, and today we woke to rain and dropping temperatures. I understand from the news that cold weather didn’t stop Black Friday from being blacker than ever, but there is no way in hell you’d get me in a store, much less a mall, after yesterday and in light of today. No, we’re all in our stretch clothes lounging for the lord around here and that is not about to change. We went from 80’s to today in the mid 50s but we’re expected to climb back up to almost 80 by Monday – typical of weather this time of year when you can’t get down your cold clothes, because you still have to have room for your warm clothes, and forget about in-between clothes.

Yesterday was beautiful, windy and wild. From the point of waking up till we sat down at the table it was nonstop hustle bustle but it brought about one of the most lovely Thanksgiving I’ve had in a long time. We set up the table on the bayou and everyone brought their plates laden with Greek offerings. Tin who had waited much too long for his meal, wound up hitting nap time and so he was absent from the table (our bad).

I began with Keat’s Ode and we segued into everyone presenting their version of the written embodiment of the day. Our friend’s daughter (above) recited Robert Frost, while his son (below) gave us a two word Portuguese poem that simply translates into “Love, Humor.”

We heard from Langston Hughes, Marianne Williams, Virginia Woolf, Wallace Stegner, Elizabeth Bishop, Constantine Cavafy, and many more as one by one we recited lines that resonated across the bayou – “Life ain’t been no crystal stair,” “No. Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?” “There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.” “Opa! Opa! Opa! [replete with dish throwing]” and more.

Thanks for the food, thanks for the giving, thanks for everything that made the day special to me and all of us who came to the table.

I wonder if I have ever felt more alive, more competent in my mind and more at ease with myself and my world, than I feel for a few minutes on the shoulder of that known hill while I watch the sun climb powerfully and confidently and see below me the unchanged village, the lake like a pool of mercury, the varying greens of hayfields and meadows and sugarbush and black spruce woods, all of it lifting and warming as the stretched shadows shorten.  Wallace Stegner

This year we’re taking the turkey out of Thanksgiving and putting the Thanks in and the Giving. We’re gathering today to give thanks for the day and in the spirit of our Greek theme, my poem today is Ode to A Grecian Urn by John Keats – nothing could be more appropriate than to use one of the greatest odes in the English language to fit the theme (Greek), the mood (I too am contemplating the soul, eternity, nature and art), and the spirit (remembering the truth in life is the present is the epitome of beauty and therefore must be given its full attention) of the day. Happy Present Day to you all!

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

By John Keats

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

1820

Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 80s and I think it is 80 right now at 10 pm but everywhere else it is cold – Steve said it is 20 in Oregon, Alice posted over a foot of snow in Utah, and I believe Illinois is cold as well.

Meanwhile, while I sit here with the a/c and fan cranked up high, hot in my light shift nightie, T is bathing in a chicken bath (so hot it would boil you alive) and I’m just wondering what we will possibly wear tomorrow for Thanksgiving – shorts? tank tops?

It’s nutty!