reliving good byes

Our next door neighbors have a daughter who is graduating from high school in June and headed to Sacred Heart University in the fall. Naomi, Johanna's mother, told me the other day about how anxious and happy Johanna is to be leaving home.

Plus Mark's mother gave Johanna her car when she bought a new one. Knowing Johanna's grandmother as I do, I'm sure it's pristine.

It reminded me of our 'good byes' with Josh and Mimi.

Josh left first. He was going to UMass in Amherst. He was spending his Freshman year in a high-rise dorm and it was taking forever to get moved in because they were using the elevators to move people in one at a time. So, he told us to go home and we left him sitting on his luggage on a sidewalk. Bern cried half the way home and I shed a tear or two myself.

Bennington College, where we drove Mimi 3 years later handled the transition with much more grace and speed, being much smaller than UMass. All the parents were invited to a patio of one of the schools buildings to hear from the President. She told us to not try to find our children to say good-bye. "Just go home," she told us, "we'll take care of them as if they were ours." And I think they did.

Another good-bye: After graduating from college, we took Josh to some airport where he was flying to England to live and work for a year. He was walking away from us, down a long hall-way, and waved his hand without turning around. Our baby boy was going to another continent, and what we got was a wave with his back turned!

I told Naomi that story. She laughed and said, "I doubt we'll get even that from Johanna!"

Pondering those good-byes was somehow cleansing for me.

I'd suggest you think about the good-byes of your life and ponder how rich saying them was....

Beet pee and Beet poop

So, one of times I peed today, it was pink. I was horrified. I had prostate cancer and surgery and radiation and another treatment. And I have, not for a long time, had blood in my urine and urinary tract infections that required being in a hospital and catheters and all the horror of all that.

But, just as I was nearing panic, I remembered I had eaten two roasted beets last night--and beets will make your pee pink.

So, I was ready when I had a poop a few hours later, for the red and pink that came when I flushed.

Beets do that to you, if they're fresh and roasted.

So, if you eat beets, remember I told you this....

Looking at photos

My hair is completely brown, as completely gray and white as it is now.

Lots of people in the photos are dead now, and I buried most of them.

I found a bunch of pictures of my installation as Rector of St. John's in Waterbury in 1989.

26 years ago now and a lifetime ago.

So many people in these pictures are dead now.

I suppose I'll be in pictures people look at after I'm dead, as well.

How odd. Caught in the moment, alive. Viewed decades later and dead.

And I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now (in spite of my gray/white hair).

If I could go back to that moment, knowing what I know now, being who I am now as opposed to then--Lordy, Lordy, what a difference I could make.

Time travel hasn't yet been invented. But if it were, I'd go back there and be a better priest and a better husband and better father and better man.

Too bad, it seems, that finding your 'better self' comes after the fact.

I am so much more "who I am" now than I was then.

Thus it is, I suppose.

And I admire my 26 years ago brown hair a bit too much.

That way is vanity, I suspect.

Humility may just be knowing you're smarter now than you were in the past and can't do a damn thing to convey that wisdom backwards to when you needed it.

Something like that, if that makes any sense at all.

temporary hysteria

So, I coughed up some pheylm and spit it in the sink and it was red.

Oh, God! I thought. I'm coughing up blood.

I already was thinking about which emergency room to go to, whether Bern should drive me or stay here to call Josh and Mimi and tell them their father was on the brink of death.

I took a deep breath, preparing for the worst, and realized I'd just eaten two roasted beets....

I brushed my teeth and spit out red.

I'm not on death's door after all. It's just beets.

Hope I can remember tomorrow when I have a bowel movement that is sure to be red.....

I love fresh beets but there are drawbacks....

Chickens and widgets...

There is a huge problem in the Northwest and Midwest with avian flu. Millions of chickens and turkeys are being 'depopulated' because migrating wild water fowl are leaving droppings with the virus in them and they are being tracked into chicken and turkey farms by human beings.

I listened to an hour of reporting on the situation on 'On Point' on NPR. Lots of Ph.D.'s and Veterinarians and professors who are experts on domesticated birds. The thing that struck me most was how they all spoke of chickens and turkeys the way people with talk of widgets and paperclips--mere products.

There is federal money to compensate 'farmers' for chickens they euthanize, but not for fowls that simply die. So when the flu is discovered, it is financially advantageous to simply kill all the birds rather than see how many of them avoid the virus.

The language used by all the experts and most of the 'farmers' did not in any way indicate that chickens and turkeys are living beings. They are only products!

Wild birds don't die from the virus the way domesticated birds do because of genetics. They just sneeze and ache a bit and poop out the virus as they fly to their summer homes.

I've been putting '...' around 'farmers' because if someone has 5,000,000 chickens raised inside, they aren't farmers...they are 'factories'. So no wonder these birds become 'products' rather than living things.

We already only buy eggs that are 'cage free'. Now I think I'll only buy 'free range' chicken--trusting that the government truly certifies that they are 'free range', even though it's a lot more expensive.

I have no 'touchy feel-y' connection to chickens and turkeys. I grew up around my grandmother's chickens and ducks, but had no emotional bond with them. But I've always acknowledged that they are living, breathing, feeling creatures.

I watched my Grandmaw kill chickens quite a few times. She would pick them up and cluck to them and rub them, and then, quick as you could imagine, she twisted their heads off and threw them ten feet away to pout blood from the neck and then die. Then I'd see her pull off the feathers and burn off the pin feathers at her wood stove, the smell made me queasy.

I didn't eat chicken until I was an adult.

If I had to kill my own meat protein, I'd be a vegatarian.

I should ponder that, I suspect....

crickets

The crickets are out big time tonight. Oh, not outside, but in my head.

I have a serious case of tinnitus that, lucky for me, sounds like crickets. Lucky for me since who doesn't love the sound of crickets?

And tonight they are really singing.

I know what stops it--certain notes from a pipe organ will. When I was at St. John's in Waterbury and the magnificent McManis organ was being tuned, I'd go into the sanctuary and sit until the crickets went away for a while.

And riding in an airplane takes them away for as long as the trip lasts.

And I know it has something to do with atmospheric pressure since some days leave me cricket-less and others don't, but I haven't figured out whether it is low or high pressure that does that.

Like I said, I'm lucky the sound between my ears sounds like crickets. It could, I suspect, be very annoying to have some other sound in your head.

I just know this: tonight the crickets are singing loud and long.

Sometimes I can hold my nose and blow and be cricket free for a while. But not tonight.

But it's crickets, for goodness sake. Who wouldn't be glad to have that sound follow them around in life inside their head?

Spring has sprung???

So, yesterday was beautiful and I even grilled on the new grill Bern gave me for my birthday. Lovely, short-sleeved weather. What could be better?

Today, it was 40 and I had on a tee shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a sweater plus a coat if I went outside.

What happened?

Who's in charge here?

What happened to Spring?

And it rained all day, which makes our psychotic Puli dog even more psychotic since he hates rain.

Lucky for him he's not out in a field watching the sheep in the rain.