The ugly wife

(Note to reader: Don’t know why I didn’t post this one at the time – last summer – but here it is now.)

So, I’m sitting in the waiting room of a Ford dealership in Schiller Park Illinois at about 7:15 this morning, waiting to find out if I need to spend a few grand on my transmission before I can start the 2300 mile drive home. Now, you might think my mood was kinda low, given the circumstances. And you would be right, except for a news item that changed my day.

There were four of us within earshot when a story came on about some guy who is suing his wife for divorce on the basis of fraud. It seems that the morning after the wedding night was the first time this schlub had seen his beloved without her makeup and he was displeased at the revelation.

Hmmm, I say.

But my waiting room posse said more than hmmm. In fact, the other man and woman waiting for their bad car news and the cashier behind the counter all broke into riotous laughter. After a beat, so did I.

Sometimes, other people’s problems sort of make your own recede into insignificance. And that poor woman’s problems makes my broken car seem less important than a hangnail.

The real question here is not how this idiot managed to get to the marriage bed before he decided he didn’t like his wife’s looks. The real question is how she got to the marriage bed without noticing what a slug she was marrying.

Anyway, not that I am one to revel in the problems of others but I do have to admit this was the most jovial waiting room experience I can recall.

More great quotes

“The smile that followed made the sun look like a fool.” Toni Morrison, Paradise.

As you might deduce from the title above, I had intended this to be a discussion of some of my favorite quotes. But I didn’t get past this one by Morrison. I am staggered by her ability to capture a thought so perfectly in so few words. So I’ll stop here.

“The smile that followed made the sun look like a fool. “

Wow.

Two women

              There are many people I’ve come to respect over the course of my life. For diverse reasons I find them exemplars of some aspect of what I suppose I’ve come to consider ‘right living.’ Marilyn and Barry for how they came through Christopher’s death and in spite of their loss found a way to make life good for their other children. Anne for redefining herself on her own terms.

              Joe is facing terminal illness with grace and humor, while Elaine remains the perfect partner for a man who will be gone too soon but for the moment is very much still here.

              Mary for too many reasons to list here, and many of them too private. Rachel for finding friends by being a friend.

              Sherree for persevering, all the while providing foundation for Naomi and always a kind (or frequently, goofy) word for someone who needed it.

              All of these and more have contributed to my life in ways that I could not have predicted, didn’t ask for, but without which I question whether I could have become myself.

              I’m thinking of two such people tonight, each a friend in her own way and each a special contributor to my life. What they have in common is that each of them set out to find her dream, to fashion a life around a central theme that was uniquely her own.

              Sindy was always going to be an actor and sure enough, she is and always has been. Her life in theatre has followed the ragged course that life defines for you even as she kept her nose ever pointed in the direction of her dream. There were sidesteps and roadblocks and other passions but never did she give up on her need to be herself, a self that needed to be played out - at least in part - on the boards. She is well along in her journey now and recently has returned to the core, acting with friends old and new and expressing herself through her chosen medium.

              Angela also dreamed of the life dramatic and charted a course no less serpentine than Sindy’s. There have been successes and setbacks and just now she finds herself at a crossroads, faced with the choice of taking one path or the other, or perhaps blazing a new one of her own. I take great pride in her achievements but even more, my chest swells at her striving. She shares with Sindy the single-minded passion for her art that ensures, even if it’s not always her job, it will always be somehow entwined in her life’s work.

              Sindy’s life didn’t follow a straight line. News flash – neither has mine. Or Mary’s or Sherree’s or those of the many people I respect and care for.

              And so far, neither has Angela’s. And that’s okay. Because she has never given up or given in and I’ve no doubt she will get there, wherever ‘there’ is.

              Lives aren’t supposed to follow straight lines. The only true requirement is that they must be lived. I respect these two women for living their lives. Their lives, shaped by circumstance and events, knocked occasionally off course by the actions or inactions of others. But in the end, their lives.
              We could all stand to live more for ourselves.

A cemetery

On a low hill above Tea Creek outside Milroy, PA is a cemetery. The oldest section is closest to the road, which accounts for my noticing it.

I must have driven past hundreds of cemeteries over the years but this one caught me, made me find a wide place to turn about and come back. I parked at the end of the farm drive next to the cemetery, waving to the Mennonite woman who paused briefly in her chores to glance at me quizzically.

The rows of headstones were lined up perfectly like folding chairs at the school play. Perhaps it was this detail that I found most compelling. Or perhaps it was the age of the headstones, some with the carvings no longer much resembling letters and words but still clearly inscriptions.

This is a respected place, a place cherished by someone who has kept the grass nicely trimmed around each stone and the stones themselves all upright and aligned. In perfect rows all facing down slope toward the living people below. The dead are perfectly positioned to watch the processions of the living on the road below, going about their lives.

The first real play in which I ever appeared was my eighth grade production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. I was to have played the part of George except I was too tall for Nancy who was playing Emily, at least according to Nancy’s mom who was a big wheel in the parish and made a federal case of the height difference to Sister Verona… (intake of breath) but, let’s not go there (sniff!).

Since I first read that script, I’ve been affected – one might say, haunted – by the cemetery scene. The idea of the dead sitting in their chairs watching and commenting on the world of the living, the people who don’t really understand. The ones who can’t really understand life so long as they remain caught up in it.

Today, just outside Milroy, PA I finally saw that scene as Wilder must have seen it. It was magical.

I’ll sleep well tonight

You get a good rest, too.

A list for Chicago

              An “Architectural Tour” of the Chicago aboard an excursion boat on the Chicago River with Daughter Two yielded the following list of observations:

I so love spending time with my daughters.

There are lots of tall buildings in Chicago

To the top of none of which I shall ever venture.

Irish skin burns easily.

I am so glad I brought my hiking boots, in which I need to spend a lot more time, you know, actually hiking, if my now complaining muscles are any indication.

Many cool bookstores are to be found here, but none to compare with the Portland Powell’s (Sorry, Chicago…).

I could never live here but it sure is a cool place to mosey around.

Daughter Two is as big a sucker for dogs as is One (witness one Cleo).

A father and daughter should never get so wrapped in their conversation that they totally ignore the GPA lady until they realize they’ve been driving for an hour in the wrong direction.

Whys and wherefores

I’m sitting here on an overcast morning wondering at how I came to be here. Certainly, my view could have been quite different.

Instead of gazing out on a lawn needing its second mowing of the season (already?) and a glorious profusion of cherry blossoms and the decrepit shed we’ll finally tear down this summer, I could have been looking at... what?

This window could have been the more elegantly framed fenestre of a wood paneled study instead of the vinyl-coated factory framed double-pane on the outside wall of bedroom-cum-office. Or it could have been the high and narrow clerestory designed to permit entrance of light but only a slight view of the sky from my prison cell.

Could have been.

And of course, between those two extremes reside an infinite array of could-have-beens, not all glorious but neither all desperate.

There were those in my early years who thought me destined for the university and the life of the academic, and those today who wonder where I went off course. I’ve no good answer except, here I be.

At one time I saw my future as an author and now find myself instead (and joyously) a writer. ‘Author’ was never important enough to shoulder aside the writer in me.

I didn’t always see myself as a father and certainly not as a Dad, so how did I come to deserve those appellations, to the extent that I can be truthfully considered deserving of the honor?

I suppose I could have been a politician but even if elected to some middling office I would have been a poor one. Besides, earning the support of voters turns out not to be such a noble feat, judging by current events. I’ve earned the trust of the two dogs that sleep at my feet as I work and therein resides my pride.

Through accident of genetics I was born with a mind that could have learned many different things. And to a family that put those things within reach.

Could have beens.

I chose this life, I suppose, although I can’t recall the juncture at which the path leading to this desk before this window became settled.

I’ve friends, not so many but each one good and true, the family that I would have hoped for under Rawls’ veil of ignorance, and abilities and interests that fill my days with satisfaction.

You won’t find me complaining.

Even so, looking out this window as the breeze freshens and the cherry petals begin to fall, I can’t help wondering what might have been.

A non-poet's thoughts on poetry

There is poetry to be found
In the unexpected view
Of the mountain over still water.
In unrestrained
Laughter at a shared delight
Poetry may be found.

 Do not seek poetry

From this mind and hand –
I am no poet.
I take no interest
In meter or rhyme;
Of Angelou’s talent and craft
I am bereft.

 But not deprived,

For I easily find poetry
In the lives of friends,
In the triumphs of daughters
And in forgiveness for my faults.

I need not struggle to make poetry;

It is here to be found.
I’ve only to notice
And be thankful.

 

(It's Sindy's fault I did this one.)

Thanks

I love you for reading this. I really do.

Not for the thrill it gives me to watch the hit counter and know that people chose to drop by, although I guess honesty demands that I admit that’s part of it.

I love you for the choice. At this moment you could be running out to the store or reading about the latest political eruption or any of the other things with which we occupy our minds when we are neither working nor doing our laundry.

You chose to be here for this brief moment of time. And if you’ve been here before, as have most of you, it is clear by now that you’ll find nothing earth shattering in this lonely column. It’s just life. My life and my observations on the lives of others.

I like to think I provide you something in return for trusting me with a bit of the two commodities you can never replace – your time and attention. I hope I do because I feel a responsibility in that regard.

I love people who choose thoughtful conversation over diatribes, although I must admit the frequency with which I’m tempted to rant about the issue of the day (and sometimes do).

I read similar (frequently better) pages like this written by others whose thoughts I find interesting or soothing or inspiring. Some of you, some others.

I hope there never comes a time when we don’t make time for simple sharing of thoughts. Truly, I love that you feel the same.