dual personalities

It’s Friday again! The prairie fam will arrive later today. Tomorrow daughters #1 and 2 are throwing me a birthday luncheon for my lady friends and granddaughters (plus Wes). They threw me a party when I turned 60–hard to believe that was 10 years ago!

Anyway, it will be a fun and busy weekend.

Here’s a birthday poem by Robert Service written on 16th January, 1949–“Seventy-and-five!”:

I thank whatever gods may be
For all the happiness that’s mine;
That I am festive, fit and free
To savour women, wit and wine;
That I may game of golf enjoy,
And have a formidable drive:
In short, that I’m a gay old boy
Though I be
Seventy-and-five.

My daughter thinks. because I’m old
(I’m not a crock, when all is said),
I mustn’t let my feet get cold,
And should wear woollen socks in bed;
A worsted night-cap too, forsooth!
To humour her I won’t contrive:
A man is in his second youth
When he is
Seventy-and-five.

At four-score years old age begins,
And not till then, I warn my wife;
At eighty I’ll recant my sins,
And live a staid and sober life.
But meantime let me whoop it up,
And tell the world that I’m alive:
Fill to the brim the bubbly cup –
Here’s health to
Seventy-and-five!

As a reformed Presbyterian, I have recanted my sins and I’ll admit I do live a rather staid and sober life, but I still know how to whoop it up. And I plan to this weekend!

And Mr. Smith was a naughty boy and thought it was very funny…

(BTW, the beautiful Iris is from Don’s garden–mine are still buds!)

*William Shakespeare

Today is daughter #2’s birthday! We will celebrate on Friday when the whole prairie gang comes into town for my birthday–the first time since before Wes was born! In the meantime, happy birthday, precious Susiebelle!

Yesterday I delivered a “meal train” dinner to a fellow parishioner who was recovering from a shoulder replacement. She is an almost 90-year old lady–a tiny woman originally from Texas who has a concealed carry license and who really reminded me of another little lady from Texas I used to know. She talked my ear off for an hour! We had a great time. Another lesson learned by this poor introvert.

Here’s a poem for daughter #2 by Mary Oliver, The Black Walnut Tree:

My mother and I debate:
we could sell
the black walnut tree
to the lumberman,
and pay off the mortgage.
Likely some storm anyway
will churn down its dark boughs,
smashing the house. We talk
slowly, two women trying
in a difficult time to be wise.
Roots in the cellar drains,
I say, and she replies
that the leaves are getting heavier
every year, and the fruit
harder to gather away.
But something brighter than money
moves in our blood–an edge
sharp and quick as a trowel
that wants us to dig and sow.
So we talk, but we don’t do
anything. That night I dream
of my fathers out of Bohemia
filling the blue fields
of fresh and generous Ohio
with leaves and vines and orchards.
What my mother and I both know
is that we’d crawl with shame
in the emptiness we’d made
in our own and our fathers’ backyard.
So the black walnut tree
swings through another year
of sun and leaping winds,
of leaves and bounding fruit,
and, month after month, the whip-
crack of the mortgage.

And for those of us old enough to remember: