Three weeks in

We’ve been under stay-at-home orders here for several weeks now. We’re still alive, so Peter was wrong about that. But he was right to be concerned. Joseph will be doing school online through the rest of the school year, and won’t  even get a graduation  ceremony. Silas is working from home. I’m  teaching virtual music lessons.

And I ran out of library books, and the library is closed. So I’m reading Boswell’s “The Life of Samuel Johnson” because we had it on the shelf. Silas probably got it at the MCC sale some year. Sadly, there won’t be an MCC  sale this year.

I’m  enjoying the book. It’s a nice change. Instead of my usual fantasy and science fiction, it’s British guys in wigs addressing each other as “Sir” and making very humorous, dry remarks about people from Scotland and stuff. But no matter how long this goes, I’m not going to read the five volumes of the Summa Theologica, which are also on our shelf. I’m  eyeing our copy of “Life is a Miracle,” by Wendell Berry.

Life is a miracle, and living during a pandemic reminds one to enjoy the blooming flowers, the voices of loved ones, and every single breath.

Balance

I’ve made a sculpture on our back patio. It’s an upturned  flower pot with three stones balanced on top. And they really are balanced, unlike the ones at garden shops which have metal rods drilled through their centers.

Being authentically balanced, mine also fall off every now and then. Maybe the wind does it, or a bird. Maybe the neighbor reaches over the fence with a rake handle. I don’t know. I’ve never seen them fall. But I  find them on the ground, pick them up, and rebalance them.  My auto correct doesn’t seem to like the word rebalance but rebalancing is important, in garden sculptures as well as in life.

Right now, in life, I’m balancing Peter’s autism-fueled certainty that we’re all going to die of covid 19, my dad’s battle with cancer, which is bringing a host of relatives in the next few weeks to cheer him on in his battle, and Joseph’s immanent decision about where to go to college in the fall. Plus all the usual stuff. It’s a lot. More than three rocks worth.

On March 21, the birthday of J.S. Bach, my Dad and I, my aunt and uncle from Seattle, and various others, will be hosting an all-Bach recital at the retirement center. If we don’t all die of covid 19 before then, which Peter assures me we will.

I’m practicing my cello anyway.

Life, the Universe and Everything

On Tuesday my parents moved into a retirement community, and on Wednesday Joseph got accepted at UC Santa Cruz. It’s the kind of week when you can almost hear the great wheel of time creaking around.

I’m writing this at the old oak kitchen table that I  remember  from my childhood. It’s at our house now, along with a few other things, like my grandma’s  painting of yellow roses, the windchimes, a pile of old family pictures.

And yes, I  know, this is all very ordinary. People grow up and go to college. Parents age and move into retirement homes. It happens  every day. (Well, the aging part anyway.  Not the college or retirement  home part, which requires money or at least a whole lot of financial aid).

And the sun sets. And flowers bloom. And the whole huge universe swirls around us. All the time.

But that doesn’t make it any less . . .

I couldn’t  decide on a word to finish that sentence. Maybe there isn’t a  word, just that feeling that we have in those rare moments when we feel embraced by things that can’t be put into words.

Hiding

I finished writing a children’s story, Dream Sketcher. And I self-published it, as I usually do. So I included an author’s bio at the back. I like looking at those in other books that I read. I always feel a bit cheated if there isn’t a picture of the author, though. It’s not that I really care what the author looks like, it just makes it more human somehow. You feel more of a connection with the author if you see what the person looks like.

So what picture should I put on my own author page? Well, I chose the one that I use on Facebook. It’s basically a picture of my guitar up close, with just my forehead and eyes peeking out from behind it.

I like that picture, because it captures a truth about me. I’m shy, and I love music. But I like to peek out at the world, observe what’s going on.  I’m an observer at heart. And I have a sense of humor. The picture of my guitar and me sort of sums those things up.

In the case of Dream Sketcher, it also goes well with the story. The plot involves a bit of mystery, and some doubt as to who the author really is.

Bag Pipes

While walking with Joseph and Willow this morning we got on the topic of ethnicity. “We’re  part Ukrainian, right?” he asked. Well, not really, I explained. Our Mennonite ancestors lived in Ukraine, but they didn’t  intermarry. The family on both sides are fairly pure German until, well, me. I married an English/Scottish guy. Hm. I never really thought about it like that before. Me. It ends at me.

And I just used Grandma Joyce’s  Christmas money to order a practice chanter. That’s  the instrument you learn to play bag pipes on, before you use the actual bags and all. It’s  the pipe without the bag, so to speak. I’m  fascinated with bag pipes. I’d  love to stand on a Scottish hillside overlooking  the sea and play. Would I wear a kilt? I actually looked that up. Do female bag pipers wear kilts? Apparently  opinions differ on that.

But anyway, rather than say that the German Mennonite purity ends with me, let’s say that something else begins with me. To German Mennoniteness I am adding the windswept  Scottish hills and the mournful sound of bag pipes ( perhaps very mournful, since I may not be very good at it if I ever get my hands on real bag pipes).

Back Again?

It’s  been an entire year. I did more or less give up for a while. But apparently I’m  not very good at that. So here I  am again.

News in the Langley household? Most notably, Julia has requested that we go back to Peter, and he has a short haircut now, and the beginnings of a beard. His journey continues to be difficult and fraught with peril.

I’ve  begun writing again, after months of drowning my sorrows in crossword puzzles. At least that doesn’t  damage the kidneys.

Willow is still with us. There are fewer stray pit Bulls in our new neighborhood. And I  have no idea why the computer just capitalized the word bulls. I’ll  leave it that way just for kicks. Isn’t  technology grand.

Well, more later.

 

 

15 drops

I almost gave up between this post and the last one. Gave up on what, you ask? Well, I almost gave up on writing any more blog posts, for starters. But that was just a symptom of almost giving up on putting a positive spin on things. Maybe things would just be allowed to stop being spun and sit in resounding silence in all their bare and depressing not-so-greatness.

Maybe I should sink into the role of the frazzled, increasingly older looking mother and wife trying to hold the family together. End of story.

I’m not saying I’m officially not giving up, but I might as well at least attempt another blog. I did feel a little bit tempted to post a picture of our new dog, Willow.

Well, how can one give up when her little black nose is so cute, even if she has a bit of a barking problem.

And it did rain a few beautiful drops from some wonderful clouds, and the air is so cool and refreshing.

 

Back

August already. A few things distracted me from writing over the last months. There was the whole packing, lugging and unpacking of our possessions. Then Jasmine and I were attacked by pit bulls during our morning walk and she didn’t make it. So there’s been grief and post traumatic stress to deal with. And Joseph has started high school. And Silas started a new job. Basically, not an easy summer.

We miss Jasmine. Joseph and I miss Jasmine at bedtime, when she would curl up and lick her paws peacefully while I read out loud from fantasy novels. Now we have a small tin canister of her ashes, and some pictures, and the chewy toy she liked to hide in Joseph’s blankets. But we don’t have her cheerful presence. And I have a fear of pit bulls.

But sinking down in those thoughts is not an option. Forward we go. Waiting for rain now. Waiting for the coolness of autumn. Getting to know our new neighbors. Hoping for the next things.

Degrees

Tomorrow, or the next day, it will hit 100 degrees, right in time for the first of June. How organized of the weather.

And we are still here. No disasters have struck. Even MacBeth, the Comedy was not too disastrous, and Joseph is already looking back on it with fond memories.

On our anniversary, over a plate of hummus, Silas and I decided to move ahead with plans to sell our house and hopefully move into a condo at the Fresno cohousing community. We contacted our church friend who is a realtor that evening, and two days later the first people who came to look at our house offered the full asking price and it is now in escrow.

It feels right. The Langley’s, I am coming to accept, are migratory. And once one accepts that, it’s okay. Butterflies are migratory. Canadian geese. Native Americans used to move around a lot. Gypsies. I play lots of instruments, after all, and Joseph is quite good on recorder.

Gypsies probably didn’t own thirty boxes of books, though. I’m sure butterflies don’t. It would be awkward. But that’s something migratory book lovers just have to deal with.

And so on into June, which will be hot and pungent with the smell of cardboard boxes and packaging tape.

Prepping

As I drove home from work yesterday the public radio station that I was listening to was doing a report about preppers, in this case people who buy secluded million dollar estates in Montana complete with gun lockers and food supplies and all.

Huh, I thought to myself. Who wants to survive a disaster if the only people left afterwards are rich folks who hid out in million dollar estates in Montana while everyone else suffered and died?

There should be a counter movement of preppers, and the check list would simply be :

Are you prepared to die, prepared to share your last bottle of water with the old lady next door? If not, sort out your priorities.

Anyway, its early morning right now and I’m typing this one letter at a time on a tablet. There doesn’t seem to be any other way I’ll get to write anything. It’s been a month that I’m glad to see the end of. Silas’s job search continues, Julia’s anxiety disorder has taken a turn for the worse, etc.

May might be better. It will include Julia’s graduation from high school, our anniversary, Joseph’s birthday, not to mention his classroom production of Macbeth, The Musical which I’m helping with (it’s a comedy, sure to be a comedy of errors).

Or maybe we’ll die in a disaster. Hopefully before that 8th grade performance of Macbeth, The Musical.