May Thoughts 2023

    

  Lately I’ve been thinking about how a year ago I was seriously injured and out of commission for a while. It’s a weird kind of anniversary, but it was a huge learning experience. I had to learn to step back and let others take over doing most everything, including caring for my daughter. Of all the things I could not do for a few months that is the one that gave me the most stress. Thankfully my husband stepped up in a huge way, and we were able to connect with a wonderful caregiver to do the weekday morning “shift” of getting  our girl up and ready for her day habilitation program bus. I also couldn’t drive for a while so had to rely on grocery deliveries and rides to doctor and physical therapy appointments. I’ve always been an independent person and having to rely on others and accept help for everything was quite challenging at first. It helped to remind myself that just as it lifts me up to help others, they were being lifted up to be able to help me. 

     May is a month of celebration and commemoration. It is both my husband’s father’s and my mother’s birth month, Mother’s Day, my father’s death date, and Memorial Day. That is many events to reflect on and memories to go over. It can make me a little sad when I think about how I will never again share birthday cake with my father-in-law or my mother in May. Never again will I see my mother’s delight at a flower to plant in her yard or piece of jewelry to wear for her birthday or Mothers Day. Sometimes when I’m out shopping I see a blouse or necklace and think, “Mom would have liked that”. I miss picking out those birthday cards. I think about my father’s passing 3 days after my mother’s birthday, and how unexpected it was. I miss his quiet, gentle presence and dry sense of humor. I often think of him when I hear songs on the radio that we listened to together in his car when he drove me to my boyfriend’s house in high school. I remember how tenderly he held my babies and sitting on his knee as he read “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and other fairy tales to me when I was a small child. We miss him, we miss them all.

     Memorial Day is how we end this month, and we generally mark it with the first cookout of the summer season, although it is still technically spring. We used to get together at my parents’ house every year for “burgers and dogs”. Mom made potato and macaroni salads, and we had a good time in the back yard all afternoon. Now I have a cookout at my house, with pretty much the same menu— why change a good thing? I look forward to it every year. I remember my senior year of high school and I was on the drill team with the marching band; we twirled the flags as we marched in front of the band. For Memorial Day that year instead of our usual uniforms we wore denim shorts, white tee shirts and white canvas shoes. We were very happy about that! It’s funny the things we remember.

     I hope you have a May filled with memories of good times and loved ones

Poetry Month

 

I do love poetry month! It gives me an excuse to pen some ditties, (not that I really need an excuse, but still!), and challenges me to try for one a day. I don’t share them all, some I keep just for me. I do like to share them on Facebook and Instagram as my friends and family seem to enjoy them almost as much as I enjoy writing them. I also really like to take a photo of something and use it as a background for a poem. Sometimes the picture makes me think of the poem and other times I go looking for something to snap a picture of that will suit my verse. I’ve always liked sing-songy rhyming poems. I was remembering today how I spent an afternoon in my childhood with my friend Susie O. at her babysitter’s house and we wrote a rather long rhyming song like poem about the sitter’s basset hound whose name was Billy Jo. I wish I had that poem, or was still in touch with Susie. I remember how it began: “Oh Billy Jo, I just don’t know, about your toe, Oh! in the garden, I’ll beg your pardon….” Isn’t that silly? I think we were probably about 9 years old. She lived up the hill and around the corner and about half a block down from me. I recall being at her house one summer afternoon and a thunderstorm came. Her mother drove me home in her little Volkswagen Beetle. I remember both her mother and mine being angry because I didn’t run home when I heard the thunder before the rain started, it was torrential rain, too. Shortly after that, her mother remarried, her last name changed, and she moved away. It’s funny the things we remember.

This is something I am not likely to forget! Last week on Monday morning I looked out my kitchen window and was very surprised by what I saw in the branches of the Rose of Sharon—it looked like a submarine sandwich or a hot dog. Looking through the window screen it was hard to tell so I went outside and stood beneath it and saw that it was a half eaten baguette!  I took pictures and called my husband out to be a witness to the phenomenon, lest anyone think I was losing my mind and making up fantastic stories. He was just as flummoxed as I by it. We went about our errands and by the time we returned home it was gone. I still don’t know how it got there, or where it went, we assume a squirrel might be responsible, but I guess a large bird might be responsible. Of course I had to write a poem about it after one of my friends issued a challenge!

The background of this one is the Pequest River at our favorite hot dog spot, Hot Dog Johnny’s. It’s nice sitting watching the river and munching on arguably the best hotdogs ever. The Pequest feeds into the Delaware River, also there is a fish hatchery nearby, I’m pretty sure I went there with my daughter’s class when she was in elementary school. They breed the fish to stock the lakes and rivers for fishing season.

Sometimes the moon is quite bright even before the sun has completely set, and pictures never do it justice. Still, I liked the way it was framed by the lacy branches of the soon to be leaf covered Maple trees, and inspired this short verse that was liked by many of my friends. I think we all feel a bit pensive when gazing up at the moon.

So happy poetry month!

Spring Has Sprung!

The creeping myrtle that I pulled long ago from the bank behind my childhood home and transplanted here at our house is one of the first plants to flower right after the crocus appear.  It really is quite invasive and can be a challenge to keep it from taking over the landscape, but I planted it in the back corner which is fairly rocky and unusable without major effort and landscaping.  It reminds me of my growing up years, my mother aggressively pulling it out in the spring to keep it where she wanted it.  Sometimes in the summer I would take a blanket and my lunch and have a little picnic in the grass at the base of the bank between us and the neighbors on the hill behind us.  That bank also provided us with a place to sled in the winter and just run down in the summer.  The neighbor sometimes yelled at us to get off that hill, not sure if the top of it was her property or ours but it didn't stop us from playing there.  My brother Dan broke his arm running down that hill and tripping over a tree root. Good times--haha!  Poor Dan was the one who broke bones--arm, wrist, thumb--all while just being a kid and running around, riding his bike, and playing.  I guess out of four kids one of us had to be accident prone!

You know it's spring time when the forsythia blooms!  These also remind me of my childhood because we had a huge "fence" of forsythia between us and the side neighbor.  They are also invasive!  My mother, it seems, loved her invasive plants--ha!  It did make a really good privacy fence though.  We only have a few growing across the back of our yard, but of course they are spreading so.....

We had a few really warm, summer like days this week and one evening after dinner I spent a little time on the back deck and watched the moon rise through the trees. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's funny how the moon rises before the sun is set.  It was pretty bright because it was nearly full on this day.  Soon the leaves will be out and I won't get to see it through the trees until the fall.

I don't remember how long ago I planted these hyacinths, but this one came up in spite of being covered by leaves and a pile of twigs my husband put there last fall.  I moved the sticks off of it when I saw it coming up through the leaves.  Soon we'll have to get busy with rakes to uncover everything.

My older daughter and I went to a paint and sip fundraiser for the pet adoption she went through for her new cat.  I was smiling, but the person who took the picture must have snapped this before that--probably I was saying something in the second before.  It's a fun memory now!  I followed the colors on the example picture and the instructor's direction, Anna made hers colored like two of her cats. 

The background of this picture is from our little Lake George at Schooley's Mountain Park nearby.

 

Kindred Spirits

This is a picture of the lake in my town. I can see it from my kitchen window when the trees are bare. I wrote the poem and posted it as my Facebook status. My friend Jen is quite a good photographer and lives within a short walk of the lake where she uses her camera to document its many moods. She read my poem and asked if I minded her putting it with one of her winter lake shots. I readily agreed; I very much admire her ability to capture the ever changing look of the lake and sky so I was honored that she wanted to add my words to one of her photographs.

I first met Jen when we joined the church over twenty two years ago.  She was a Sunday School teacher and one of the first people to welcome us into the church family. My girls were very young, her children were grown and as the years went by we lost touch as our lives went in different directions.  occasionally we'd greet each other in passing around town. A few years ago she called to ask permission to post pictures she took of my husband in a parade with his bagpipe band. We chatted for a while and then became Facebook friends. I think we share a mutual admiration of each other, a general optimistic outlook on life and a love of words.

We meet people throughout our lives; some we never see again, and some we connect with from time to time; flowing in and out of each others lives. I believe when kindred spirits meet they can reconnect at any time with no awkward feeling.  It's nice how that happens.