Closer to Fine (Indigo Girls)

"There's more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in a crooked line..."

Glimmers.  I've seen the word before in others' writings, and I've referred to it elsewhere in this blog.  It's so easy to get stuck, mired, enveloped in the fog of grief.  Getting out of bed each morning feels insurmountable... putting one foot in front of the other to get through the day is challenging... coming to grips that your loved one is gone forever is still impossible to fathom.  And for a while that's all you can see.  Darkness.  Yeah, I realize the irony.

Yet, every once in a while, glimmers appear.  Small, brief, barely recognizable... but they're there.  Like fireflies.  And they speak of possibilities.  

And it won't be the default anytime soon, but Fun is finding its way back into our MossFam dynamic... and Laughter... and Joy.  Rob uncharacteristically called a Family Dinner into action tonight (it's usually *me* herding the cats).  I picked up pizza on the way over to Sarah's.  The theme was "New Year, New Me, New E".  There was a heartfelt toast.  We didn't know what to expect, but it morphed into an evening with Willie Nelson, Bette Midler/Annie, Will from Stranger Things, a mermaid, Slash, Kris Jenner (and Kris Jenner as a blonde!), and a cranky Dennis the Menace who was not amused, had to be bribed with brownies, and even then snarled his way through our photo-ops.  And it was very good... 💖💖💖💖💖

"It's only life after all, yeah..."

SONG:  Closer to Fine by Indigo Girls

BOOK:  Grief Glimmers Grace by Betsy B. Murphy

POEM(S):  The Edge by Donna Ashworth

Standing at the edge of a new chapter can be scary. 

The desire to run back into the pages you know so well, 

is more than tempting. But you must keep moving. 

Chapters end, even the good ones. 

And if you linger in the past too long, 

your story cannot unfold the way it should. 

And you might just miss the most beautiful moments of your life, 

whilst grieving the ones gone by. 

It’s scary at the edge, my friend, I know. 

But just jump. You have so much ahead. 

And the good stuff behind, will always be there.

The Way It Is by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Over and over we break

open, we break and

we break and we open.

For a while, we try to fix

the vessel—as if

to be broken is bad.

As if with glue and tape

and a steady hand we

might bring things to perfect

again. As if they were ever

perfect. As if to be broken is not

also perfect. As if to be open

is not the path toward joy.

The vase that’s been shattered

and cracked will never

hold water. Eventually

it will leak. And at some

point, perhaps, we decide

that we’re done with picking

our flowers anyway, and no

longer need a place to contain them

We watch them grow just

as wildflowers do—unfenced,

unmanaged, blossoming only

when they’re ready—and my god,

how beautiful they are amidst

the mounting pile of shards.

QUOTE(S):  "Without suffering, there's no happiness. So we shouldn't discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“Don’t get me wrong: grief sucks, it really does. Unfortunately, though, avoiding it robs us of life, of the now, of a sense of living spirit.” ~ Anne Lamott

"Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place." ~ Rumi

It's Christmastime (Let's Just Survive) (Kathleen Edwards)

I bought a Nativity set (at Sears, of all places!) our first Christmas in Puerto Rico (1985), which means it's 38 years old now.  When they were younger, our tradition was for each child to take turns putting the characters in a place of their own choosing. The only rule was that the Baby Jesus could not be in the hayloft (since Mary and Joseph didn't fit up there as well).  Somehow it always managed to go smoothly and cooperatively.

When we sold our house and downsized to the condo five years ago, we had all the kids (now grown) over and did a schoolyard pick of the ornaments and various decorations.  Rob chose the Nativity and, since he and E lived together for four years, they continued the ritual.  This year will actually *not* be our First Christmas Without Eric; last year was, since E went with Duyen and her parents to a cabin in North Carolina for the holidays.  Before he left town, he texted the above photo to Rob... 💞

P.S.  Speaking of Rob... Happy Birthday to my Middle Child!  We gathered together for a Family Birthday Dinner this evening, and invited his friend Leslie (who is a darling).  Happy Fish Sushi:  Delicious food, beautiful ambience, stunning presentation; we'll be back.. 🍣

If you haven’t sent cards this year, or forgotten someone’s gift.

If you don’t have matching pyjamas or a festive family photograph.

It’s okay.

If you can’t find the energy to be merry and bright,

or your tree isn’t even decorated yet.

That’s really just fine.

If you don’t feel like watching your favourite Christmas movies, or honouring the traditions that you normally always do.

Don’t sweat it, my friend.

This year has been hard, for many.

Really hard.

If you can’t see a way to celebrating like you have in the past, don’t worry.

Just hang on in there, finding any joy you can in any little way.

Just make it through till next year.

One day at a time.

We need you.

Hang on in there.

You are loved.

~ Donna Ashworth

Referencing the poem below... in our case, today is 12 weeks (and a week from today makes *three* months) since Eric died:

SONG:  It's Christmastime (Let's Just Survive) by Kathleen Edwards

BOOK:  Michael Rosen's Sad Book by Michael Rosen

POEM(S):  Two Months after My Son Died by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

for MS

She gave me an hour.

Since then, every minute

has grown from the soil

of that time.

She gave me silence.

It was the wisest teaching.

She did not know me.

She deeply understood my heart.

There was a time

when she, too,

was met with unthinkable loss.

Now she knows

to say the name

of the one who is gone.

She knows not to fix.

She knows the gift

of being seen.

She asked for nothing

in return.

Over a year later,

I remember how she listened

with her eyes.

I remember the generosity

of her gaze.

She lit a candle for my child,

a golden light

on a bed of amethyst.

With that flame,

she has lit hundreds more

through my hand.

Sometimes I wonder

where her flame began,

I think of all the hands

lighting all the candles.

How beautiful that light.

How far we have come

from the dark we have known.

by john roedel

the wounds in our hearts

seem to ache a little deeper

during the holidays

don't feel like you

need to cover your wounded

heart in wrapping paper

this Christmas

you don't have to

tie the corners

of your lips with

garland to force

a smile

you don't have to

keep whistling

"silent night" to keep

people from noticing

your bottom lip is trembling

you don't have to blame

an allergy to nutmeg

for why you are walking

around with tears in your

eyes

for this Christmas

give yourself

permission

to feel whatever you

need to

last night

I was visited

by the ghost

of yuletide Heartbreak

she told me this:

it's okay to not be okay

on Christmas

it's okay to be melancholy

under the mistletoe

it's okay to come apart

while they are caroling

it's okay to trace your scars with your fingers

while others are humming ‘Holy Night’

it's okay to miss the presence of your beloved

amid the sound of opening presents

it's okay, my love,

to hurt during the holidays

don't stuff your stockings

with your suffering

don't hide your healing

during the holidays

give yourself the gift

of being authentic to yourself

it's okay to not be okay

during Christmas

it's okay to let the broken

pieces inside of you 

be the only jingle bells you

hear

because, my love, because,

it means you are still fighting

to stay alive

and I can't think of anything 

more to celebrate than that 

Talking to Grief by Denise Levertov

Ah, grief, I should not treat you

like a homeless dog

who comes to the back door

for a crust, for a meatless bone.

I should trust you.

I should coax you

into the house and give you

your own corner,

a worn mat to lie on,

your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living

under my porch.

You long for your real place to be readied

before winter comes. You need

your name,

your collar and tag. You need

the right to warn off intruders,

to consider my house your own

and me your person

and yourself

my own dog.

Christmas To Do List by Brian Bilston

• delay • defer • equivocate

• make some tea • procrastinate

• look at phone • stroke the cat

• readjust the thermostat

• dawdle • dither • hem and haw

• eat mince pie • chew my jaw

• write a card • spin on chair

• play six games of solitaire

• take a break • make a brew

• review my list of things to do

• eat mince pie • paper scrunch

• stroke the cat • have some lunch

• prioritise new tasks to shirk

(more cups of tea + less housework)

• look at phone • spin on chair

• eat mince pie • loiter • stare

• consider shopping • have quick doze

• rest mince pie on bridge of nose

• stroke the cat • take a break

• write a card • eat some cake

• spin phone • mince cat • stroke tea • wallow

• write To Do list for tomorrow

QUOTE(S):  “Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day at numbness, silence.” ~ Anne Lamott

"And in the quiet, I hear the echo of your absence.  In the stillness, in the silence, my heart aches with emptiness.  Loss is so loud.  Oh, loss is so loud." ~ Liz Newman

“When you meet someone in deep grief, slip off your shoes and set them by the door.  Enter barefoot, this darkened chapel hollowed by loss, hallowed by sorrow, its grey stone walls and floor.  You, congregation of one, are here to listen, not to sing.  Kneel in the back pew, make no sound, let the candles speak.” ~ Patricia McKernon Runkle

"What greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead." ~ Euripedes 

Fix You (Coldplay)

Family vacation, July 2017, Cudjoe Key, photo credit: https://www.emileemcgovern.com/

It was a quiet, low-key week... Day-Quil-ing and Night-Quil-ing and Hall's lozenging, oh my!  I should have given you all a heads-up to buy stock in Kleenex... 🤣

It was also a strong emphasis on Radical Self-Care:  lots of hot baths, early bedtimes, catching up on TV shows (I finished Six Feet Under, at least as fabulous as I remembered it, if not more so):

"You think you finally get to the bottom of the feelings... and then there are more."

***

"I know.  I still can't believe it.  It's like... now we just go on with everything?  It's what people do."

***

"This is a hard day, and we're all very upset.  The loss of a young person is always a terrible blow.  But, in this case, it's even more cruel because [no spoiler!] was an idealist, and he struggled, all through his life, to be a good man.  He wasn't perfect; but then who among us is?  And he never gave up on himself, the people he loved, or even love itself, in all its vexing, beautiful forms."

***

"I forget how anyone ever gets over anything."

"...with time."

"...by remembering love."

"what the h*ll does that mean?"

"Slowly you fall back in love with whatever really mattered to you."

I started a WhatsApp Winter Wellness Challenge (in a no-pressure, no-guilt, no-stress definition of the word) for the month of December, inviting immediate as well as extended family members to join me in sharing (publicly or silently) their accomplishments... their stumbles... their affirmations... their words of wisdom... their get-up-and-do-it-again-amens... their memes... their goals, etc.  Motivate.  Inspire.  Encourage.  Today is Day 3 and it's already unbelievable lovely... 💖

I was delighted to test COVID-negative on Friday, meaning I could gather with Sarah, Colin, and Rob to decorate her Christmas tree that evening... as well as get back to the Hope garden yesterday.  "Oh patience" indeed... ॐ

SONG:  Fix You by Coldplay

BOOK:  Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations For Working Through Grief by Martha Whitmore Hickman

POEM(S):  Allium by Rosemerry Wahola Trommer

 

While I did not fix

the thing I most

wish to fix, and I

did not do

the most important

thing on my list,

and I did not save

anyone, and I did

not solve the world’s

problems, I did

plant the onion sets

in the garden,

pressed my fingers

into the dry earth,

knew myself as

a thin dry start.

Oh patience, good

self. This slow

and quiet growing,

this, too, is

what you are

here to do.

Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,

stepping gently, looking two times north and south,

because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.

No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo

but he's not marked.

Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,

HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.

He hears the hum of a boy's dream

deep inside him.

We're not going to be able

to live in this world

if we're not willing to do what he's doing

with one another.

The road will only be wide.

The rain will never stop falling.

QUOTE(S):  “You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and finally, grief ends up giving you the two best gifts: softness and illumination.” ~ Anne Lamott

“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ~ Pema Chödrön 

"Our death is our wedding with eternity." ~ Rumi

"I held on to a thought about my boy that helped me face a future without him:  He had loved me his whole life.  That love is precious; and it's for keeps.  I will not waste it." ~ Hilda Bastain

I Remember Everything (John Prine)

The Beanie Twins, December 2015 I think?

I am trying to snap out of my Anger stage of grief, so today I set about conjuring some lovely remembrances of Eric:

~ He saved a kid's life when he worked at C. B. Smith water park in Pembroke Pines.

~ He was The Baby Whisperer.  There is a video, when Colin (Sarah's son) was less than a year old, and all Eric had to do was look at Colin, which elicited such contagious belly laughs... and then Colin would stare at E, and Eric would do it again, and more hilarity ensued.

~ He loved, and was good at, skateboarding.  There was a crew of friends in his neighborhood who would get together daily to practice their moves.  One of the dads built a ramp and they'd put it in the middle of the street, and then have to move it every time a car came by!

~ About five years ago, E started a new tradition.  He would give out Christmas cards to the family, and write the most beautiful sentiments in them, really speaking from the heart, telling us how much he loved us and how lucky he was to have such a great family... 💗

~ Eric was born in Puerto Rico, and has the birth certificate to prove it! 

~ Eric was a very handsome young man.  It was a running joke that many of Sarah's friends had a crush on him, and a few of mine too!  Hey, even some of his guy friends were smitten... 😍

~ He was so kind.  He was always aware of other people's feelings, and trying to make them feel better, or comforting/listening to them if they were down.  

~ In any family with three kids, there is usually a two-against-one situation, and Eric was often the One.  Ask Sarah and Rob about Hello Kitty backpack... 🐱

~ Eric was devoted to his girlfriend Duyen, meeting up with her July 23, 2021, for a coffee date in Miami.  Fast-forward almost two years later, when she graduated from UM's med school and moved to Atlanta to do her residency at Grady Hospital via Emory University; they missed each other so much that he found a job and moved up there just this past March so they could be together again.  They were good to, and for, each other.

~ He was very smart, keeping up with current events and business trends.

~ Eric would call and/or text us often, letting us know he was thinking about us.  

~ He played the guitar as well as bass, and would often sit alone in his room, noodling along to YouTube videos.  He was a huge music lover (Chico and I take pride in the fact there was always music playing in the house when our kids were growing up), and he not only adopted our Beatles and Neil Young, but developed his own personal style: traditional reggae, as well as indie bands like Passafire and Rebelution.

And speaking of remembering, I asked Duyen to set aside E's T-shirts so I could have a quilt made from them for her (just as I did with my Labyrinth Cafe and Dar Williams Ts.).  I will attempt to prepare and mail them off tomorrow (turnaround time is usually a month).

I miss my guy... 💔

SONG:  I Remember Everything by John Prine

BOOK:  Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief by Victoria Chang

POEM:  Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Do not care if  you bring only your light body. 

Would just be so happy to sit at the table

and talk about the menu. Miss you.

Wish we could bet which chilis they’ll put

on the cubes of tofu. Our favorite.

Sometimes green. Sometimes red. Roasted

we always thought. But so cold and fresh.

How did they do it? Wish you could be here

to talk about it like it was so important.

Wish you could. Watched you on the screens

as I was walking, as I was cooking. Wished you

could get out of the hospital. Can’t

bring myself to order our dish and eat it

in the car. Miss you laughing. Miss

you coming in from the cold or one

too many meetings. Laughing. I’ll order

already. I’ll order seven helpings, some

dumplings, those cold yam noodles that you

like. You can come in your light

body or skeleton or be invisible I don’t even

care. Know you have a long way to travel.

Know I don’t even know if it’s long

at all. Wish you could tell me. What

you’re reading. If you’re reading.

Miss you. I’m at the table in the back.

QUOTE(S):  “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” ~ Anne Lamott

"Memory isn’t something that blooms, but something that bleeds internally.” ~ Victoria Chang

Rise Up (Andra Day)

I am feeling a bit weepy today.  A musician-friend e-mailed me a recording a few weeks ago (which I only just found in my inbox!) of her duo's newest song for me to check out (theme being the fear as well as the forgiveness of 2020), and it is absolutely lovely (the harmonies, the lyrics, the jangly guitars).  

Then, not five minutes later, I discovered (again, belatedly) this clip that another friend sent me a while ago, which had me bawling all over again.  I do not watch those talent shows (nor will I), but the gentleness and beauty of the artist's rendition overwhelmed me... 💖

As we approach the one-year anniversary of The Day the Earth Stood Still, I am allowing myself a few moments of fragility and vulnerability.  The father of my son E's best friend/college roommate passed away a few weeks ago of prostate cancer (the service is this weekend).  He was diagnosed at the same time as my husband (who is fortunately now cancer-free), but the disease was already in the later stages, and eventually metastasized.  Our whole family has been in "there but for the grace of god" mode; it is a cautionary tale about the necessity for following up, as well as never taking for granted those you hold dear.  My heart hurts, but it reminds me that "Love is touching souls" indeed... 💞

It's Feel Good Friday.  As is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy!

~ A Virtual Evening With Anne Lamott & Hoda Kotb (TONIGHT!!!):  In Dusk Night Dawn:  On Revival and Courage, Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad news piles up—from climate crises to daily assaults on civility—how can we cope? Where, she asks, “do we start to our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back…with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?”

~ City Guesser:  a geography based browser game that strives to provide an exceptional travel and guessing experience. City Guesser launched on August 13th, 2020, and welcomes thousands of geography-enthusiasts each day.

~ Sheet-Pan Everything:  20 often surprising, always delicious recipes for the most versatile pan in your kitchen

~  Live @ the Freight by Cry Cry Cry (Lucy Kaplansky/Richard Shindell/Dar Williams):  All proceeds from this album will be donated to Live Music Society to help sustain and rebuild venues for live music. Please consider a generous donation so that Lucy, Richard, Dar and thousands of other artists can perform for you in the future.  “Live @ the Freight,” was recorded at the last show of Cry Cry Cry's sold out 20-year reunion tour in 2018.

~ Forking hell! Is The Good Place the ultimate TV show for our times?:  Michael Schur’s series about heaven and hell was not meant to be topical, but it’s become the ideal antidote to the news cycle [Warning: this article contains spoilers]

NR:  Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks

SONG:  Rise Up by Andra Day

BOOK:  Rise Up: Confronting a Country at the Crossroads by Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson (Foreword)

POEM(S):  Haiku by Melissa Kirsch

I don't want this year

to turn into a blur of

Zoom chats and Netflix

I Am Tired of the Movie About Sentimentalized Male Failure by Sophia Stid

You know the one—it stars Clint Eastwood, or Beau Bridges.

Whoever it is, he’s got a face lined as the map he crumples

and stuffs in his back pocket in the first minute of the movie

I don’t want to see. I don’t have to see it to know he’ll get lost.

He’ll spit a wad of tobacco out the window of his truck,

dig out the map and unfurl it against the steering wheel.

He looks at the map quizzically. At some point in the movie,

he’ll miss his daughter’s wedding. He’ll disappoint his wife.

His daughter will marry a man so not like him that he’s exactly

like him. In this movie, everything is about him. Look at him

looking at the map. In this movie, there will be long shots

of the horizon, strip club scenes, whiskey, fists, and pills.

They don’t make movies like this about women. The plot

is watching this man bleed out and calling it interesting—

calling it a reckoning. “You know the reckoning’s gonna come

for you,” my cowboy friend Jack told me once in a bar, smiling

in that lazy cowboy way I loved. I laughed. I had no idea

what he meant. I was twenty-two. I thought love took care

of everything, like the concierge in a fancy hotel we couldn’t afford—

I thought all I had to do was show up. So when a reckoning came,

I didn’t expect the desire to run, that lurch like wild horses

in my chest. How, when her call came—Come home—I thought,

I can’t. My reckoning came when I went home anyway.

My reckoning came with pills, prescribed, morning and night.

I counted them out into her Day-Glo Days-of-the-Week pill-minder.

Her pain was not about me, but secretly, I wanted it to be.

I wanted someone to say, Oh, you’re doing such a good job.

The shame of that. How sometimes I watched myself in a movie

as I watched her strain to breathe, watched my hands move

around her doing everything they could, which was not

enough. It was hard to watch but it was easier to watch it

than to be there. Oh, my endless lack, hard as the prairie

scarred beneath the churning herd of wild horses I called

my sense of self. That self, that sense, scattering, and scattering

again. When I paused the movie in my head, all I had

were those horses and the chalked taste of the dust they kicked up—

and even that is metaphor, a kind of watching. Past the horses,

past their fear and sweat and trembling, what was left?

A pain that was not like anything else but was only itself.

The gap between who I wanted to be and who I was.

Nothing I did could save her, and I had to do it anyway.

I hated that. Counting the pills, I kept losing track.

The relentlessness of starting again—one, two, three …

their pastel shells clicking against the plastic. I listened

to my lack. I wanted to leave every day. I didn’t leave. I stayed.

That was the only miracle, and it wasn’t a miracle at all,

but it was a kind of healing, the kind I didn’t even know

enough to ask for. I want to tell the man in the Clint Eastwood movie

what that healing feels like. I want him to look back on a life

he rose to meet, to know how it is that we’re changed in the rising.

I’ve known men like that man in the movie—men who hide

in their bourbon, men who hide in their fiction, men who hide

in being men who can’t love, and all of it is the same hiding.

Fear disguised as grappling disguised as American manhood.

Men who drawl, Baby, I don’t want to hurt you, a hoarse chorus,

hurting and handsome in their pearl snaps, studying the map

Clint Eastwood stuffed in his pocket like that’s a map that could ever

bring them anywhere new. Baby, I want to say, burn that sad map.

Spit out the fucking chew that will kill you. If you want interesting,

forget the drugs, the blood, the road. Forget your own lack,

every idea about how you can’t love or what you deserve.

If you want a reckoning, love someone for a long time.

There’s never been a map. At the end of the metaphor

is a gap that hurts to look at. Look anyway. Our reckoning

is here, and you know the only kind of reckoning I trust

ends in more love. The kind you can only see in the looking back—

but look. Look. There. How we changed. How we rose.

[Sophia Stid: “Lately, I’ve been leaning into a kind of poetics of friendship—writing poems for my friends, because of my friends, writing with their words taped over my desk. This poem started in a dark movie theater in Nashville with my friend Joanna. (We were about to watch a terrible movie, although we didn’t know that yet.) Joanna is able to sit with paradox better than anyone else I know, and later that night she’d give me a back rub as we sat tangled up on the stairs in a cabin out in backwoods Tennessee, watching our friend Bea play a house show. This poem is for Joanna, and for Bea, for my friend Jack, and for everyone who finds themselves giving or needing care, or in a reckoning, in the gap—which, right now, seems to be all of us.”]

QUOTE:  "When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly." ~ Edward Teller

I Remember Everything (John Prine)

[Lesley Anne Numbers for the win... again!]


Life is good, especially with that mid-week recalibration.  Still challenges, as there will always be, even B.C. (Before Coronavirus), but I am working at backing off, as opposed to confronting something head-on.  I am in the most Zen-like ever stage of my life, very difficult for a control freak Leo, but am finding it more than a bit liberating.  

Had a lovely day at the beach yesterday with friends SusanP (who lives on A1A) and Nancy.  Spent almost four hours enjoying the sand, the surf (it was rough, so I only went in up to my knees!), the sun, and the serenity.  We of course did the obligatory social distancing, and it felt great to be in the open air, with conversation and cocktails (I brought wine and flavored seltzers, to make spritzers), and also bought us these cool tumblers:  Infoxicated; Oh, for fox sake; zero fox given; don't fox with me...  :-)

I also made what I called "adult lunchables":  plastic rectangular Chinese take-out containers, each one containing an individual hummus, grapes, mini-cucumber, sliced carrots, semi-soft sun-dried-tomato-and-garlic vegan cheese, crackers, and a clementine.  SusanP provided chairs and a beach umbrella, and Nancy brought her famous homemade vegan banana-mango bread.  I am tan, I am grateful, I am soooo relaxed.

Had a family get-together shortly thereafter.  Caught up on jobs, unemployment payments, grocery shopping... all while watching Colin run around with a jumbo stick of chalk in each hand.  Lovely!

Then home to watch the beautifully-done John Prine tribute (you can view the whole thing here), with amazing artists like Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, Todd Snider, Brandi Carlile, Bonnie Raitt, etc., interspersed with heartfelt words from Brene Brown, Bill Murray (who called JP "a unicorn among nags"...  :-), Billy Bob Thornton, and of course John's wife Fiona.  "Start with a blank piece of paper, and don't write what shouldn't be there", said Prine about songwriting.  When I wasn't crying, I was laughing uproariously.  And we were treated to a new song, previously-unreleased (today's subject title).  I donated to Alive, and I bought a T-shirt...  💖

So, it is indeed Feel Good Friday.  As is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy!  


~ Despite efforts to quash them, Black Lives Matter protests lead to change in Miami-Dade:  The baseline ill, racism in policing, remains with us.  But despite efforts to quash Black Lives Matter protests in South Florida, the demonstrations of outrage over George Floyd’s murder — and the community activism that has risen around them — have already led to some positive change.


~ Sellers of Sex Toys Capitalized on All That Alone Time:  As the pandemic approached its peak, online retailers saw sales spike.


~ Former Green Beret, who advised Colin Kaepernick to kneel, talks about others taking a knee in solidarity:  NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has issued an apology saying the league was wrong in the way it handled its response to player protests in the past against police brutality and racial injustice.


~ With a Turn of the Can Opener, Make Sorbet:  An almost 25-year-old hack lets you use a food processor and canned fruit to create frozen treats.


~ We are witnessing the birth of a movement — and the downfall of a president:  We've reached a turning point in the Trump era. The 2020 campaign is in the streets and he's losing



SONG:  I Remember Everything by John Prine

BOOK:  Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott

POEM:  Study Electricity, Etc. by David Kirby

Third item on Jay Gatsby’s self-improvement schedule after “Rise from bed” and “Dumbbell exercise and wall scaling.”

You did that already—not electricity,
but the et cetera part. Et cetera means
“and the rest,” and you’ve mastered that.
You work from home, as we do these days,
but you put on a nice top and a dab of makeup
and combed your hair. When the children
need help with their homework, you make
time, and when your husband says he wants
to give them two more math problems
and some vocabulary, you say fine. The four
of you have lunch together, and when he takes
the kids out to play with the dog, you manage
a quick nap. Then tea, then you wrap up
your work and make notes for tomorrow.
Scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit cup
for the children. Let them watch Frozen
for the hundredth time—how could it hurt?
Now you and your husband can have dinner
on the deck: goat cheese, shrimp with
mushrooms, a bottle of Sancerre so cold
you think your teeth might crack. You walk
around the block, making room as others
approach. Bath time. PJs. Their books, yours.
When you were walking, you waved to other
families on their porches. They waved back.

[David Kirby: “Low-effort thinkers make headlines every day by reacting angrily and even dangerously to the guidelines we have to follow if we’re going to heal our world. To prepare for his future, young Jay Gatsby resolves to ‘study electricity, etc.’ For years I’ve wondered what that ‘etc.’ is, but COVID-19 has given me my answer: it’s the hundred unrecorded daily ways in which we care for ourselves and others with patience and love.”]

QUOTE:  “Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.” ~ Matt Haig

#41 (Dave Matthews Band)

Today is Day 41 of Self-Isolation/Shelter-in-Place/Stay-at-Home, and we have left this house less than a double-handful of times, for short periods.  This is all so surreal!

Getting ready to go out for my daily walk, especially after my husband regaled me with details of the three phases of the Pandemic of 1918.  Just what I need to hear... more gloom and doom, glass not only half-empty but shattered into a bazillion pieces.  Maybe the title of this blog post should be Murder in the City (The Avett Brothers).  I would most certainly be acquitted, right?...  :-)

P.S.  Today is also Day 1 of *not* popping an Aleve as soon as I got out of bed.  More stretching, more yoga, and introducing a wellness shot twice a day (like my friend Nina makes).  Turmeric is a natural way to reduce inflammation, in addition to many other health benefits... 💓 

SONG:  #41 by Dave Matthews Band

BOOK:  A month and a day, meet April Thursday by Britney Harris

POEM:  April Inventory by W. D. Snodgrass

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.   
In one whole year I haven’t learned   
A blessed thing they pay you for.   
The blossoms snow down in my hair;   
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.   
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,   
Younger and pinker every year,   
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop   
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now   
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how   
My teeth are falling with my hair.   
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,   
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I’d ought to know,   
Then told my parents, analyst,   
And everyone who’s trusted me   
I’d be substantial, presently.

I haven’t read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.   
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.   
And one by one the solid scholars   
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;   
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.   
Lacking a source-book or promotions,   
I showed one child the colors of   
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;   
To ease my woman so she came,   
To ease an old man who was dying.   
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;   
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body’s hunger;
That I have forces, true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,   
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.   
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,   
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.   
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

QUOTE(S):  "The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year." ~ Mark Twain

"These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back." ~ Anne Lamott

I Have Just Said (Sara Bareilles and The Milk Carton Kids)

My friend RobbyG told me that her firefighter son-in-law and his co-workers do this nightly at their fire station, here in South Florida, and I was delighted to read the following article in yesterday's New York Times to find it was nationwide... actually, worldwide...  :-)  I cry every time I think about it and, starting this evening, I am going to incorporate the expression of gratitude into my nightly ritual.  To quote Mary Oliver:  “Thank you, thank you.”

In Praise of Quarantine Clapping
By Amanda Hess
April 9, 2020

Every night at 7, my Brooklyn neighborhood comes to life with the calculated whimsy of a cuckoo clock. It starts with a single neighbor clapping. Soon dozens more join in, throwing open their front doors or hanging from their windows to put their hands together and say “wooooo.” Perhaps 20 seconds into the proceedings, a man emerges from the garden apartment across from me, banging a pot with a spoon, and a woman appears on the stoop of the house next door, her spaniel barking helpfully at her side. Often there is a special guest: On a recent evening, a guy motored by on a delivery bike, a whistle blaring from between his lips. It’s all over within five minutes.

The Clapping first spread through New York City on a Friday night in late March. Following similar gestures in Italy, India and Spain, the New York iteration was seeded by a strategic marketing firm and circulated over social media to thank workers on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak. It was originally presented as a one-off event, and after that, residents were asked to repeat it once a week. But now we do it every single night.

The Clapping has surely been heard by doctors and nurses and E.M.T.s, by UPS workers and Instacart delivery people and the many other New Yorkers who are putting themselves at risk to protect their city. I live just a couple of blocks from the choked I.C.U. of the Brooklyn Hospital Center, and on Tuesday, firefighters lined up right outside the center to cheer the staff on.

But the more the ritual is repeated, the more it feels as if it’s for the rest of us, too. We used to go out to concerts or movies or plays and clap for the performances. Now the clapping is the performance. It is our regularly scheduled programming, live and in person when basically nothing else is.

Thanking health care workers may be the point of this act, but its delights lie beside the point. The Clapping is a communal outburst. It is a reminder that though we are isolated, we are not alone. It is made up of a hundred little improvisations that nevertheless add up to a comfortingly predictable cacophony, tailored to the street where you live.

In some neighborhoods, the Clapping manifests as a sparse pattering, and in others it echoes between high-rise apartment complexes, producing walls of sound. On a recent night in Stuyvesant Town, the Clapping was punctuated by clanging bells and hoots from horn instruments; on the Lower East Side, somebody blasted out Sinatra singing “New York, New York.” I’m told that some blocks do not clap at all.

It’s a cliché to describe a performance as “life-affirming,” but here the description feels true. I like it for smaller reasons, though. Like many New Yorkers, I don’t know most of my neighbors, and I’ve found myself using these few minutes every night to gather clues to their domestic lives. I notice who emerges from sprawling multistory brownstones and who from apartment buildings. One night the man with the pot was joined by a companion banging her own kitchenware. Another time, the spaniel failed to appear, and I reveled in my exaggerated disappointment. Did the dog have a previous engagement?

There are those who choose to abstain from the Clapping, and those who actively campaign against it. The British right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins, who is whiling away her quarantine standing in front of a poster of the American flag and ranting into her webcam, has criticized the applause in England as a foolish hobby. She called it “clapping at the sky,” which is an accidentally lovely way of putting it. Others argue that the Clapping is an empty gesture, accomplishing nothing for the workers who are most at risk. And yet even for the critics the Clapping is a kind of gift; it gives them a performance to pan.

It’s true that on the internet, the ritual can appear flattened into a self-satisfied show. On Twitter, I watched the queasy corporate spectacle of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco light up with a video of clapping hands. The hashtag #ClapBecauseWeCare distorts the experience to fit the contours of a social media awareness campaign; it oversells the purpose of the event and makes it all feel a little smug. As social distancing has migrated all of our human interactions online, the Clapping has revealed the limits of the medium. Experiences let loose on the internet risk being swiftly mined for their utility to the platform, reduced to mere carriers of information capable of accumulating commentary and debate.

I can understand why people feel compelled to share videos of the Clapping, as it is perhaps the most thrilling non-horrifying event that a quarantined New Yorker can document on any given day. But watching the Clapping in other neighborhoods feels pointlessly remote, like eavesdropping on a conversation in a language you don’t understand. You kind of have to be there — and you only get to be there if you’re already there.

Clappers may have learned of the ritual through a Facebook post or a message chalked on the pavement of a neighborhood park. But it persists because we hear it, and we want to keep hearing it. Some days it is the only thing I hear from outside that is not an ambulance siren.

Every night as the Clapping hour approaches, my body is alert with anxious anticipation. Will we clap again tonight? So far, the answer has been yes. With each day, it feels more likely that we will stop only once the virus does. Until then, I’ve got nowhere else to be.


SONG:  I Have Just Said by Sara Bareilles, unwittingly in collaboration with The Milk Carton Kids, lyrics are a poem by Mary Oliver (thanks to JudiS for the heads-up on this...  :-)

BOOK:   Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott

POEM:  I Have Just Said by Mary Oliver

I have just said
Something
Ridiculous to you
And in response,
Your glorious laughter.

These are the days
The sun
Is swimming back
To the east
And the light on the water
Gleams
As never, it seems, before.

I can’t remember
Every spring,
I can’t remember
Everything-

So many years!
Are the morning kisses
The sweetest
Or the evenings
Or the in-betweens?
All I know
Is that “thank you” should appear
Somewhere.

So, just in case
I can’t find
The perfect place-
“Thank you, thank you.”

QUOTE:  " 'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding." ~ Alice Walker