Did you have a good weekend? How was your Easter?
I had a lovely birthday…
and a perfect Easter…
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31
And the Blues advance in the Stanley Cup playoffs…Go Blues!
“GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD,” John writes, “that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That is to say that God so loved the world that he gave his only son even to this obscene horror; so loved the world that in some ultimately indescribable way and at some ultimately immeasurable cost he gave the world himself. Out of this terrible death, John says, came eternal life not just in the sense of resurrection to life after death but in the sense of life so precious even this side of death that to live it is to stand with one foot already in eternity. To participate in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ is to live already in his kingdom. This is the essence of the Christian message, the heart of the Good News, and it is why the cross has become the chief Christian symbol. A cross of all things—a guillotine, a gallows—but the cross at the same time as the crossroads of eternity and time, as the place where such a mighty heart was broken that the healing power of God himself could flow through it into a sick and broken world. It was for this reason that of all the possible words they could have used to describe the day of his death, the word they settled on was “good.” Good Friday.
– Frederick Buechner, The Faces of Jesus
Have a blessed Easter weekend. Go to church!
We will celebrate with our little family at church, brunch and with peeps.
–Thomas Aquinas, translated from Latin to English by Edward Caswall and the compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1861
(The Crucifixion stained glass window by J. Gordon Guthrie, Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, New York City)
Well, today is Siblings Day. Yes, that is a thing. Ever since 1997. “The holiday is intended to be a celebration of the relationship of brothers and sisters.”
Funnily enough, it is not easy to find pictures of my three siblings together.
Here we are circa 1967 when madras was all the rage…
…and here we are at sib #3’s graduation from Smith College in 1981. It must have been a late night…
Well, okay, I’ll toast my wonderful sibs! That’s a no-brainer. But I don’t need a special day to do that, right? While I’m at it, I’ll throw these sibs in as well…
And here’s to spring which has arrived in flyover country.
Huzzah!
*Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Daughter #2 buzzed into town for her birthday on Friday and we did all the things, starting with margaritas followed by a Bob Dylan sing-a-long.
We exchanged small gifts…
Daughter #1 with her dopplegänger…all she needs is little bangs!
…ate lunch out, sat on the patio and gabbed, drank Prosecco in the Florida room, barbecued, and celebrated her birthday with the wee babes…
…all the simple pleasures. Our one indulgence was getting mani-pedis. We deserved it after watching daughter #1 and the boy run in the Go! St. Louis half-marathon!
According to the Post Dispatch, marathon runners faced a hillier-than-expected course and warm temperatures. (Thousands participated, although you can’t really tell from my photos.) Well, we were very proud of our participants. We went to Schneidhorst’s for a big breakfast afterwards, but the boy took a shower and went to work at his store!
I slept like a rock on Sunday night.
*Augustine of Hippo
“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”
―
Today is our father’s birthday. He would have been 97!
I have forgiven my father for a lot and forgotten even more.
I am grateful to him for tying the knot with my mother and for going to work all those years and supporting us when he might have been doing something else. We were a boisterous trio of kids and we annoyed him frequently, if not endlessly. That’s the impression he gave anyway. I wish he could have enjoyed us more. I think all fathers should enjoy their children. They grow up pretty fast and move on and have children of their own.
Well, I know for a fact that the boy enjoys his children.
May it always be so.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; 5 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; 7 and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
–Deuteronomy 6:4-9
(Pssst. A frontlet is a decorative band or ornament worn on the forehead.)
It rained most of Saturday; our front yard is a pond again. But daughter #1 drove in to town on Saturday morning to go to an event that night, so we went out in the rain to a really good estate sale where we made out like bandits, limited only by the size of my car and our puritanical sense of restraint.
She got a really nice chair and a lamp and I got a mirror…
and a vintage waste basket. It was one of those houses where an Episcopalian has lived for 50 years and it all looks and feels extremely familiar to me right down to the books and records, collections, art and furniture.
Daughter #1 went home to mid-MO on Sunday morning, having led her trivia team to victory (First Place!) at the Mercy Hospital NICU trivia night fundraiser, along with the boy and daughter #3 and some of their friends. I stayed home and watched Move Over, Darling (1963) with Doris Day, which went along nicely with my self-comforting plans.
The wee babes and their parents came over for Sunday night dinner. The OM tried out his new barbecue, which he had spent all weekend putting together.
The burgers and hotdogs turned out nicely!
And the Florida room is open for business!
Another busy week commences and a new month! As usual, I’m taking it one day at a time.
*John Samuel Bewley Monsell (1811-1875)
Fight the good fight with all thy might!
Christ is thy strength, and Christ thy right;
Lay hold on life, and it shall be
Thy joy and crown eternally.
Run the straight race through God’s good grace,
Lift up thine eyes, and seek His face;
Life with its way before us lies,
Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.
Cast care aside, lean on thy Guide;
His boundless mercy will provide;
Trust, and thy trusting soul shall prove
Christ is its life, and Christ its love.
Faint not nor fear, His arms are near,
He changeth not, and thou art dear;
Only believe, and thou shalt see
That Christ is all in all to thee.
April is just around the corner. The year is almost a quarter over!
The 50th anniversaries of some big events are coming up this year.
There’s the moon landing of Apollo 11 on July 20…
…and Woodstock, of course, in August…
…and our brother’s 50th high school reunion is this May.
Sigh. Time marches on.
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90: 12)
Yesterday was DN’s birthday and, although I remembered and, indeed, thought about him all day long, I failed to mention him in my blogpost. This week is rather fraught, ye unto brimming, with things to occupy my mind, so I’m sure he understood.
I am very grateful that DN is a part of our lives.
You what-what?
Besides being a loving partner to daughter #2, he talks with me about books and makes wonderful cocktails and drives me to the airport in ice storms. He appreciates symbolism in religious rites. He is not averse to visiting battlefields and other historic sites and can poke around in an antique store without getting impatient. He ordered three dozen tiki glasses (un-prompted) for the 200th birthday party for Herman Melville we are planning for this summer!
“He’s a keepah!”
The wee laddie has always agreed.
*Chuck Berry
Another whirlwind weekend comes to an end, this one filled to the brim with the whirling dervishes known as the wee babes.
The boy dropped them off at 9:00 am on Saturday and I entertained them until daughter #1 returned from having her oil changed (and getting donuts). We read this book which I had bought at the Art Mart, having remembered it fondly from my own childhood many moons ago.
They loved it! That color wheel is the best. The wee babes knew all their colors and all the animals–oinka oinka–pictured inside. This book may be 60 years old, but it really holds up! (Back in print for the first time since it was published in 1959, “proudly reissued in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Little Golden Books!”)
Daughter #1 and I then bundled them into their double stroller and walked up to the little neighborhood park. They ran around like free range monkeys and climbed on the climbing structure and went down the slide many times. They also enjoyed picking up sticks and leaves and poking around. It doesn’t take much. We met some friendly dogs being walked and that was exciting too.
After we got home and ate lunch, the wee laddie could barely keep his eyes open–all that fresh air and running around you know–so we moved into the TV room, hoping some Veggie Tales would put them to sleep. This plan backfired as the new room, which is usually off-limits to them, renewed their strength and curiosity, and they were off to the races again. We had no luck getting them to nap, although the wee laddie finally crashed in the crib upstairs and slept like a log for a good long while. Miss Lottiebelle would not settle down, however, so we tried a variety of activities to no avail. She was pretty stressed out by a) the fact that her brother wasn’t around and b) she was upstairs in a mysterious new part of the house and c) her mommy was out of town. As a last resort, we got out a huge box of old Beanie Babies and went through them. By the time we roused her brother and things got back to normal, it was almost time for their daddy to pick them up, which he did around 3:30 pm.
After they left, daughter #1 and I indulged in a large glass of wine. (It was 5 o’clock somewhere.) The OM took us to dinner at Dewey’s (more wine) and when we came home and got in our jammies, we watched Tommy Boy (1995),
Fat guy in a little coat…
which says a lot about the state of our minds, and went to bed at 9:00.
Sunday we got up and finished the last of the donuts and daughter #1 hit the road for mid-MO. I straightened up and did laundry etc. and moved all my plants to the Florida room. I cleaned it up and put out all the pillows. It is almost ready to have the girls over for an end-of-the-week drink! Believe me, I will need one.
I also tried to mentally prepare for the hell week that commences today. So many events this week.
But I can handle it. I am woman; hear me roar.
And this Instagram post (not actually posted) by the boy made me laugh:
Have a good week!
*Lottiebelle after her aunt ate the last bit of donut which had been sitting on a plate in the living room for 4 hours. Her tone was matter-of-fact but tinged with judgement.
When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Death of death, and hell’s destruction,
Land me safe on Canaan’s side
Songs of praises, songs of praises,
I will ever give to thee,
I will ever give to thee.
(William Williams, 1717-1791, hymn #690)
How was your weekend? I guess it was St. Patrick’s Day, but we did nothing to mark it except indulge in an Errol Flynn marathon on Saturday night and watch The Quiet Man (1952) on Sunday night. Good choices. Hear, hear.
On Saturday the OM and I also indulged in our first trip of the season to Ted Drewes. Considering my recent accident, I felt I deserved it.
Look at that blue sky!
I was the reader of both lessons in church on Sunday–both good ones: Genesis 15:1-12; 17-18 and Philippians 3:17–4:1. I especially love reading from the letters of St. Paul, because I get to say things out loud that I could never say in real life.
18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. 4 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!
After church I convinced the OM to go down to the Link Auction House with me for a preview of the next auction. A nice day for a drive and all that. We stopped at an estate sale at one of the huge houses on Kingsbury Place on the way home. Then it was time to go home and get ready for a visit from the wee babes.
When they first arrived little Lottiebelle was sound asleep and could not be awakened for quite awhile (no nap that day.)
The wee laddie amused himself with intellectual pursuits.
Sleeping beauty roused herself eventually…
…and we had a gay old time.
And now another busy, stressful week unfolds. Guide me, O thou great Redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land.
dual personalities 