Lughnasa and the Lughnasa Moon
Monday gratefuls: Feeling loved. Ruth. Jon. Gabe. Chuck roast in the instapot. Pull apart good. The Maids coming tomorrow. The cool nights. Having the lawn furniture up closer to the house. The Ancient Ones. The duckling rescue. The heart of Bill Schmidt. The openness of Mark Odegard. The sensitivity of Tom Crane. The doggedness of Paul Strickland. My buddies for over thirty years.
Remarkable. Yesterday was remarkable. That is, I will re-mark it again and again as a special day. Let me tell you why.
Ducklings in the sewer. When I meet on zoom with my ancient friends, mentioned above, Tom, Bill, Mark, and Paul, we have a topic chosen by each of us in a rotation. Yesterday was Bill’s day and he gave us this song to investigate, especially it’s lyrics.
This was his prompt: “Bob Dylan is an insightful writer/singer. Here’s a link to his song, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) and the lyrics are attached in a pdf file. It was released in early 1965 and every verse is for this time, right now. Listen, reflect, and share. Hi light for us any part of this song that says something to you.”
It’s the task of the topic creator to sort of gently guide the discussion, so it was strange when Bill didn’t show up on the call. When we’d all popped up on the screen except Bill, Tom told us Bill had called and said he had discovered a distraught duck mother quacking and looking into a sewer grate. 6 of her ducklings had fallen into the storm sewer.
Bill. I called 911. I said this, This isn’t an emergency, but it’s important. A bit later three trucks and six men show up. A fire and rescue truck among them.
These men didn’t quit. They took the sewer grate off, climbed down. Meanwhile, I talked to the duck mother, tried to calm her down. Eventually I sat down on the curb beside her.
They got five ducklings up and returned them to the mother, who then stopped quacking and waddled off with what she thought was all of her ducklings.
No. I hear another one. One of the rescue guys. One of the ducklings had gone the opposite way from the others, sewer drain pipes lead off in both directions. I hear him. I’ll get him. They flushed out the sixth duckling.
When they got out of the sewer, the mother had disappeared. Four of them took the sixth duckling and began searching for the mother to reunite them all. They found her.
Bill made it back to his apartment before we finished and told us this story. What you do to the least of these, you do unto me. Yes. Bill. Yes.
The mailbox. Jon installed our new mailbox. It took an hour plus, but he worked away at it. I helped a little bit, but not much. My help really consisted of trying to get the old one removed. I told you yesterday how that turned out.
This morning I went out to get the Denver Post, an every morning jaunt. The new mailbox was there and I opened the road facing door. Was it smooth? Yes. It was.
Oh, wait. What’s that? There were two cloth bags inside it, one labeled grandma and the other grandpop. I put Kate’s at her place at the table and brought my bag upstairs with me.
Inside it were several small items. A Donald Duck stuffed animal, a Pokemon card, a picture of a smiling gap toothed man glued to a piece of paper, a small iron coyote baying at the moon, a bracelet, and, a piece of lined note paper.
Ruth. Dear Grandpop, I wanted to do something for you that would help to brighten your day and mood. I collected and made all of these things to make you happy. I made the bracelet of these colors because they reminded me of the sun which I think of as a very bright and happy thing in our solar system, so I hope that when you see it you will feel happy.
Her note goes on this spirit. She found the coyote in a box of her special things, Donald Duck was her favorite Disney Character. “I figured he could be your buddy in the loft.”
“I hope this brightens your day, and mood! Love, Ruthie.” How about my life? She’s brightened it from the beginning.
As I said, a remarkable day.