Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day*

by chuckofish

We had a rainy day on Tuesday, so the road crew was absent from our street and work stalled. Damn and blast. Yesterday was a beautiful day, but the workmen were slow in getting started and basically did nothing. We’ll see what happens today.

Since I was given two archival boxes for my birthday, I have been reading through piles of old letters before filing them away. They really are a window into the souls of our ancestors. I especially enjoy the ones my maternal grandmother wrote to my mother when she lived far away in flyover exile.

Tomorrow morning I have a hair appointment. Have I ever mentioned that I have let my hair grow since last Sept. and it is a “French Twist”? Ellen Coghlin told me I looked 20 years older and tried to get me to cut it. But long it is. I am nearly 65 and willing to look it. I am sure Ellen’s dyed, buffant hairdo does not make her look any younger! And her wrinkles are many.

Women do not change, do they? Well, I am with my grandmother. I am 68 and willing to look it.

Today we note the birthday of Maud Hart Lovelace (1892 – 1980), an American writer best known for the Betsy-Tacy series. My daughters were big fans of these books back in the day and now daughter #2 is reading them aloud to three-year old Katie, who loves them. She then “reads” them aloud to her sister and to the world at large. Since she has begun atttending a Lutheran pre-school two mornings a week, Jesus has been introduced as a character in her interpretive readings.

I approve.

*Delmore Schwartz, read the poem here.

Each minute bursts in the burning room,   

The great globe reels in the solar fire,   

Spinning the trivial and unique away.

(How all things flash! How all things flare!)   

What am I now that I was then?   

May memory restore again and again   

The smallest color of the smallest day:   

Time is the school in which we learn,   

Time is the fire in which we burn.