Long time gone

I haven't written here for a long time. Hope someone is out there reading, in spite of the absence.

I was in Ireland for 10 days and then had a colonostomy (which doesn't look right, but my spell check gives no real options for) and then went to Baltimore to visit grandchildren.

So I haven't been sitting around avoiding writing this stuff--I just haven't had the time or access to my computer.

(I have a new computer. My friend who helped me pick it out asked me if I wanted a laptop.

"No", I said.

"But you could carry it around," he said, "why don't you want one."

"Because I could carry it around," I told him.

I get really annoyed with people who always have their computer with them. Like sitting on the floor in airports plugged into the one outlet on the wall beneath the window. I think people should spend their time in airports reflecting on their mortality, reading trashy novels and watching other people, wondering if they'll be your seatmate. I also avoid any coffee shop that encourages the use of laptops. Jesus, eat a pastry or read a paper! I was even on the plane, sitting near a guy who still had his laptop on as we were taxiing to the runway, in spite of all the warnings. I was about the attack him like a shoe bomber when a cabin steward scolded him--at least as much as any Aer Lingus employee can scold anyone. The Irish are, actually, rather irrepressibly polite.

So I don't want a computer I can carry around. I prefer to be tethered to it, limited to a certain room for computer use, just as we have certain rooms for expelling bodily wastes.

I do have a wireless keyboard. My friend told me I could hold it on my lap if I wanted to--which I would never do and promised him I wouldn't.

I've been gone so long the page for writing this blog looks different than it did a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to post this so I can see if it still works, but I'll be back to write about various other stuff.

Alas, the dream and romance sometimes goes awry

The robins have abandoned their nest on our front porch.

I haven't seen the female for two days. Bern tells me she saw the male in the yard yesterday but he isn't standing guard any more. Tomorrow, if she's not back, I'm going to take out the ladder and look in the nest. I haven't done it yet because I still hope she'll return. There are certainly no baby robins and I want to see if there were any eggs.

I wonder what happened. Did something happen to her? Did she realize her eggs, if there are any, weren't going to hatch? I have no idea about the nesting habits of robins, but something happened, something went wrong. I know just this week she was stoically on her nest and he was guarding it from the tree nearest the porch. He even buzzed me, about a yard above my head one day this week--a warning because I was looking at the nest and Mama bird too long.

I really was rooting for them. I was terrified that babies would be born and fall out onto our porch. I'd already planned to put cushions on the floor of the porch to protect them when they fell. I was already looking forward to the little noises the chicks would make and watching them be fed and waiting until they began to fly.

I don't think that will happen now and it crushes me. Something so hopeful that didn't come to fruition. How much hope we put into HOPE and the truth is this: lots of hopeful, romantic, lovely things end like this.

Something to ponder under your personal Castor oil tree--before Yahweh sends the worm to kill it and you have to wonder and ponder in the heat of the sun: how and when and why did hopeful things come to naught in your life?

I'm reminded of sitting by my mother's hospital bed when I was 25, praying in hope for her to wake up and live. And she didn't. And that was that.

It seems to me that hope is a vain and fragile thing, something as ephemeral as a feather, as light and fleeting as a breath, as difficult to hold on to as that dream you had a few nights ago that faded into nothingness when you woke up, as hard as you tried to keep it near.

And there is this: Hope and dream and romance are the meat and drink of our souls. We are waiting for the meal we imagined and longed for and thought we might have. And often it disappoints and fails us. Just like that.

But what else is there to feed us but Hope?

When we cease to cling to Hope, all is vanity and the world implodes and our lives are meaningless.

So, even as the robins leave, I cling to Hope. It is the only thing that keeps me above the waters of despair. Some would call it madness or self-deception. But without Hope, what is there?

***

MILLERS

There was a Nancy cartoon in my youth. Do you remember it--Nancy and Sluggo? If you remember you are 'of an age', if not, still this will make sense.

Nancy and Sluggo are outside in the snow. Sluggo says he loves winter because there are no bugs. "No gnats, no flies, no bees, no mosquitoes" he says.

Then the snow slips of the roof above him and he is covered.

"And no Sluggo," Nancy says....

I am afraid of the little moths we grew up calling 'millers'. They're the little brown ones, not the big ones, not the white Mayflies, not the Luna moths, none of those. I don't know their real name but I was taught to call them Millers. They flit and swoop and dive at your face if you are sitting in light. And they scare me so much I'll go inside.

I don't know why, they just do.

I should ponder that fear, wonder about it, and ponder the other things that frighten me.

Knowing what frightens you and, in some way, 'why', is a cool breeze on a hot day, a calming silence, something profound.

Ponder this: what frightens you...and why....

waiting up....

Tonight I was out on our deck, watching the heat lightening from the north, hoping that's moving south and the heat will break.

A few nights ago, I was out on our deck, in much milder temperatures, waiting for my son to come home.

I was never able to sleep before my daughter and son came home from wherever they were. They owe me hundreds of hours of sleep over their lives--though I'm not sure how you pay sleep back....

And my son was out and I was waiting for him to come home.

He isn't 17. In fact, he is 34 (only a year older than Jesus when our Savior died...) and has taken care of himself for a decade or more now. But I was still waiting up for him to come home.

He had taken a train from DC, passing his family in Baltimore, to come to CT for the wake of one of his best friends. My son has had several good friends die already. I'm 28 years older than he is and have had fewer friends die. Perhaps he just has more friends, but I don't think it is an 'average' kind of thing.

I remember when a friend of his committed suicide. He flew to the West Coast from Williamsburg VA on St. Patrick's day, took a taxi to the Golden Gate and jumped off. A dramatic statement if there ever was one. Josh and some of his friends, coming home from their colleges, were at our house getting ready for the wake. There were all these young men--gifted and skilled--who couldn't remember how to tie their ties and hardly knew how to button their shirts. They were like people in walking comas. It was too young to stare into the very face of Death. It stunned them.

Josh arrived in his lawyer suit and dropped off his bags. Another good friend had picked him up in Southport and drove him to Cheshire. He dropped the bags on the floor, went to the bathroom and headed back to his friend's car.

Since we knew his friend over the years--he was even in England with us when we visited Josh there the year after college--we were going to the wake. Josh said, "I'll pretend not to know you," and winked. This new death had regressed him--and all of those 30-something people who were at the wake. Josh was the best dressed--still wearing his Baltimore lawyer outfit--but they were all much younger again, staring Death in the face.

When we got there and were in line to speak to the parents and wife and such, with photo boards everywhere and a slide show running on a TV, Bern suddenly couldn't do it. We didn't know his parents much at all, but we'd known their son and wanted to tell them how much we liked him and how much we'd miss him and how terribly sorry we were...all of that. But Bern broke down and had to leave. I asked her later what had caused it and she didn't answer, knowing I knew--that could have been our son, our Josh, our Bonny Bobby Shaftoe in that urn. It is hard, hard for us all to stare into the Face of Death--especially about young men in their 30's.

I waited up and Josh came home much earlier than he would have at 17. Three friends came with him and stood on our front porch with him and had a beer. Josh had played pool with his friend's 10 year old son, probably back at the parents' house. He talked about that.

I talked with them for a while, but our dog was making a fuss and I knew he's stop if I came inside, so I did that. And sat on the deck with the dog for a while and then went to bed.

Waiting up for children is just something a father does. Josh has three daughters--all of whom will be lovely and bright and much wooed. He'll learn. Maybe that's how he'll pay me back the lost sleep--with his own for Morgan and Emma and Tegan.

And may he and Cathy, his wife, the mother of my grandchildren, be as lucky as we have been and only have to deal with the deaths of your children's friends.

Staring into the Face of Death is a profound and transforming thing.

I am sorry my son has done it as much as he has.

I am thankful I've been spared much of that--besides parents and in-laws who died in the scheme of things.

Somehow, the death of the young is so much harder to manage, reconcile, include in a World View, understand, deal with.

34. He died at 34. When I was 34 I'd been married over a decade, my children were 6 and 3. I was in my prime, full of hope and expected joy.

I WILL miss him, though I hadn't seen him since the baptism of Josh and Cathy's twins 3 1/2 years ago. I remember his smile, his sweet good humor...and I think that 'was him', not just what he put on for the father of his friend. And I weep for his friends--especially Josh, of course--for having to stare into the Face of Death and having to have a father waiting up for them to come home....

A poem

I don't think of myself as a poet--much less a good poet--but I do write them from time to time.

It's quite odd what prompts a poem. For this one it was a phrase that came to my mind a week or so ago and I wondered how to make it part of something I wrote. Here is the phrase: "It was not so much what they didn't say, as how they chose not to say it."

That phrase has haunted me somehow. So I wrote this poem so I could use it.

A fiat--this, like all poetry, all fiction, is NOT TRUE. It never really happened. And there were things in my memory that prompted the setting and the characters and the story. This is a narrative poem, a poem with a story. I call it,


WHAT'S UNSPOKEN

Love is like that, from time to time, I suppose.
The unspoken part is what I mean.

A lunch with my friend and parishioner,
to talk about the marriage
collapsing around him.

How complicated to be both a friend and a priest.

We ate at a place near the church.
They do the best fried calamari
I've ever eaten
in a restaurant not near the coast.

So I had that with a salad and blue cheese on the side.
He had the Sole Florentine.

We both had three glasses of Pino Grigio.

He told me how profoundly
he loved his wife.
His eyes were glazed with wine and passion.

"I'd do anything," he told me,
a piece of whitefish on his chin,
"anything to have her back."
And I believed him.

A good meal is an odd confessional,
though we were in one of the booths
against the wall,
with photos of city landmarks
on the wall.

Sealed as I was,
I could not tell him it was
the self-same booth where
his wife had told me,
a week before,
the same things in the same way.
Longing to have him back.
Loving him greatly.

I told him exactly what I had told her,
seven days before:
"Speak it aloud. Tell of your love...."

We left after coffee.
It was a deja vu
of my lunch with her, down to the instistance
that he pay, just as she had.

The same words were spoken exactly:
"For your ear, Padre."

Both of them said precisely that,
being friends deep enough to call me "Padre",
a sort of in-joke of good friends.

Credit Card and signature exchanged,
We stepped into the September sun
and literally, literally,
bumped into his wife
and her friend from work
coming for a late lunch.

We all knew each other.
I embraced the two women
in a priestly way,
he shook their hands.

I'd seen them both
in a place of longing and hope.

I thought of breaking my vow of silence,
of telling them each what the other felt.
And I could not,
though perhaps I should have.

They were polite and cool--
I longed for them to fall
into each other's arms,
weeping and speaking the Truth.

But Truth was not spoken.
Instead, they smiled awkwardly,
were distant,
agreed without details
'to get together'
and moved away,
one full and both hungry.

Sometimes love is like that, I suppose.

It was not so much
what they didn't say
as how they chose
not to say it.

(Sorry I posted an unfinished version earlier. Too may keys on the keyboard that do things mysterious to me....)

Christ Church and Cracker Barrel

I went to Christ Church, New Haven this morning with my friend John for the solemn high mass of Pentecost. If you've never been to Christ Church you probably should go some day. It is simply the most elegant, lovely expression of High Church Episcopal worship around. You'd have to go to New York or Boston to come close to matching it. Lots of smoke and chanting and beautiful music (the best choir money can buy--mostly grad students in music from Yale). And not a sound system to be had. That and the haunting acoustics add to the mystery of it all.

I once took a friend of mine, years ago, to Christ Church for a special mass. At the door she said to the Rector, who celbrates 60 or 70 feet from the nearest chair with his back to the congregation, "I couldn't hear a word you sang." He replied, with a gentle smile, "I wasn't singing to you...."

I counted 7 folks in collars in the congregation, plus one other priest, who like me, didn't wear one. Plus the five priests in the service. I don't understand the collar fetish--of course since I haven't worn one for 6 years or so, I wouldn't. Like St. John's, Waterbury--but for vastly different reasons--Christ Church is a priest magnet. And being in New Haven there are a lot more priests around who aren't busy on Sunday morning and come for the show. However, "show" is the wrong word for it--it truly is beautiful and holy. It would drive me crazy on a regular basis--the Mass lasted an hour and a half and there were 7 hymns along with 4 pieces for the choir. But once in a while, it is a real richness that I profoundly enjoy.

Then, after talking to some of the people, John and I went to Cracker Barrel in Milford for breakfast--at about 12:30 pm!

Cracker Barrel is a cultural link to the past for people who grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line (John grew up in Grantstown, WV and we both went to WVU). And breakfast--which is why we go--is just the way it should be. You could get better biscuits and gravy at almost any restaurant in North Carolina but there is almost no where in New England besides Cracker Barrel that you can get it at all. (I did find a place in rural New Hampshire once that had great biscuits and gravy...so it might be you have to get into the 'country' in New England to find a country breakfast.)

John had pancakes, sausage, eggs and the home fry casserole. I had biscuits and gravy, grits (the best salt and butter delivery device I know of), eggs and sausage and the h'f casserole. We both ate so much we felt a tad ill and a lot full. We sort of rolled out of the place and were so disoriented by carbohydrates and fat that we had trouble finding John's car.

During the meal, John said, "You know we both know people who would make us feel uncomfortable eating this much of this stuff...."

"They're just in denial of their Inner Grease-Eater," I opined.

Christ Church and Cracker Barrel are a bit alike in that they are almost too much of a good thing. The Anglo-Catholic liturgy is bordering on 'precious'--just the way the celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon move around in such precise choreography and how they hold back his cope as he prepares the altar, like pages holding the robes of the King. And Cracker Barrel is ruled over by highly trained acolytes as waiters and waitresses. Everything precise and too much food no matter what you order.

I said to John as we sat in the dimly lit sanctuary (even the lighting is dramatic) "I don't suppose there's any chance they'll hand out red balloons during the service." He replied, "there is even less than 'no chance' of that...." I am a devotee of balloon liturgies and I normally eat cereal and fruit for breakfast. But once in a while, Christ Church and Cracker Barrel simply hit the spot that is longing to be hit....Really.

Retirement thoughts

It will be three weeks tomorrow since I stopped going to St. John's every day. I've only gone to Waterbury a couple of times--found a new movie theatre in Wallingford that's only five miles away.

A friend asked me what it was like. I told him so far it was like being on vacation. It feels that way. I take long walks. I cook more than I did. I read a book a day on average. So, so far, it's fine.

I do miss the people I worked with profoundly. Being with people most days followed by not being with them at all is strange.

And it is strange not to talk much. I once told someone my job was 'to walk around and talk a lot'. There was something to that. Now, except for Bern, I don't talk to many people where before I would talk to dozens and dozens of people a day. It's not bad. I'm discovering my introverted side. And since I enjoy my own company greatly and honor silence as 'the heart of God', it's going well.

But the people....Lordy, lordy, I do miss the people....

Packaging (cont....)

And have you tried to open a kid's toy yesterday? When we were young parents you had to stay up late to assemble things. Now you'd have to stay up into the wee hours taking things out of their boxes--otherwise the kids will have a fit waiting to hold their doll.

I can't even open the Greek yogurt my wife buys. The pull tab is useless and I end up using a steak knife to cut the top.

Remember how cereal boxes used to come open neatly and the tab slipped into the slot to keep the box closed? Remember? Now I put the cereal into big baggies with the little ridges that supposedly seal when you press them together. I say 'supposedly' since they seldom work for me--so not only are things impossible to open, there is an issue for me in closing some things these days.

But then, perhaps all this is just me....

(ROBIN UPDATE)

We were worried today because we hadn't seen the male, who usually doesn't stray far, and the female wasn't on the nest. Maybe it's warm enough to go get a decent meal. But late this afternoon I saw Papa Robin flying the perimeter of our front porch, yelling like crazy. Then I noticed he was keeping himself between the nest and another circling bird. And Mama was back on the nest.

I still think this will probably end badly, but I truly am catching hold of their outrageous hope that a nest on a former siren on our front porch will turn out well...I'm really entralled with this close encounter of a Robin kind....