Spring Bee Hiving Moon
Update on the unusual spate of hospitalizations I noted a couple of weeks ago.
Woollies recovering: Tom, thumb. Frank, back. Bill’s good after his day of needles and scans. Granddaughter Ruth who smashed her foot under a teeter-totter, mending.
Today is Grandson Gabe’s 6th birthday. He’s an earthday kid. We’re going to see him for his birthday party which is this Saturday. I’m looking forward to traveling with Kate.
Spring Bee Hiving Moon
Due to technical difficulties (I lost the dongle that connected my camera to the computer.) I’ve only this week gotten pictures from the Tucson trip loaded. Here a few just to give you a flavor of the journey. Click on the photograph to see the whole, this presentation crops them a bit.
Spring Bee Hiving Moon
Business meeting. Money continues to come in and go out. Life in advanced stage capitalism. Third life, that is.
The rain today waters in the nitrogen I put down yesterday and soaks the seeds, giving them that first shot of liquid and snugging them in their rows. The chill, raw temps are why I did that yesterday afternoon. This is the next week’s weather, roughly, according to the weather forecasts.
Kate and I see Mountaintop at 1 pm today at the Guthrie. Bill Schmidt’s description of it made it interesting to me. Also, in all these years of theater going, I’ve never seen a Penumbra presentation. Looking forward to this one.
A kind thought to all those recovering or about to begin recovering from one medical intervention or another. Especially Tom’s thumb and Frank’s back.
Spring Bee Hiving Moon
News from folks I know. Tom’s thumb is now hidden beneath protective layers and will remain so for a while. He reports things went well, but he’s wondering where his right forearm went. He used to have one.
Ruth is 8 and has ridden in a car with no car seat. This is a milestone birthday for her. She 
has a boot for her foot hurt in a teeter-totter accident. Too, she gets her own bicycle which she told me she could ride over to Grandma’s. Jen’s mother is moving to Denver in July.
Bill and I play sheepshead once a month and the hospital trend continued when Roy called up to say we couldn’t play because Judy, his wife, had to be under observation after a procedure earlier in the day. She’s doing better now.
Kate’s battery and can (pulse generator) replacement incision has healed nicely and the bandage, an itchy thing, has come off.
Frank’s up next on Monday. Back surgery. Here’s to him continuing the streak of positive medical news.
Spring Bee Hiving Moon
Sundays have a certain slowness to them, as if time itself moves languidly, the urgency of the workweek drained out. Of course, that’s an inversion of the real phenomena which happens not on Sunday but in the mind when it finds itself in a Sunday way.
Back when I was a small town boy, Sunday meant shining my father’s shoes in the morning before church. While complaining about it. I mean, thirty-five cents for dipping my hands in black shoe polish? Then, off to Sunday School with one teacher or another followed by the Sunday service sitting in the family pew (not reserved, but held for us anyhow by long tradition) under the watchful eye of Jesus praying, his hands on a large boulder, in the Garden of Gethsemane. This was stage right from the pulpit on the west side of the sanctuary.
Afterward, at least for a long time, we would often get in the family sedan, Mary and I in the back, mom and dad up front, and drive over to Elwood (our most bitter athletic rivals, but that didn’t matter to mom and dad) and go to Mangas’ cafeteria. It had those tubular rails with an upraised one at the back to hold your formica tray as you passed by the offerings in small dishes. I remember most the swiss steak, which I loved, and mashed potatoes with butter pooling yellow in the middle.
We would eat, then go home where the rest of the day disappears from memory.
Later, as a city rat, church was a work related experience since my city time is almost exactly coterminous with seminary and my career as a minister. So, I would head off to work on Sunday morning, usually in this church or that since I worked for the Presbytery (a geographical jurisdiction) and when I finished, again Sunday afternoon sort of disappears from memory.
As an exurbanite, I fell into the Sunday afternoon NFL maw for several years, but as of late the Viking’s have cured me of that experience. That means now Sundays have neither church nor the cafeteria nor football and what is left is the residue of passivity Sunday represented in its small town and football eras. No wonder my inner world moves more slowly on Sundays.
It’s my secular sabbath. And I think that’s a good thing.
Spring Bee Hiving Moon
Up early and in to Abbott-Northwestern. Kate had a battery replacement in her pacemaker. Her doctor, the yoda-like Dr. Tang, was efficient and clear in his explanations. No complications and now plenty of percocet. (update: Kate wanted me to say that the battery replacement includes the pulse generator, too. This is standard when replacing the battery.)
Driving in at 6:30 was easy, the traffic not too heavy and the closer we got to the city the lighter it got.
Everyone’s talking about the snow storm on its way. We’ll see if it interferes with sheepshead tonight. Hard to tell from the forecasts.
Spring Bee Hiving Moon
On the last afternoon of the Intensive Journal Workshop we had an exercise focused on what our life is reaching for. In the first morning we had defined the current period of our life: in my case the time after Kate’s retirement. By the last afternoon we had worked ourselves into the next period of our lives. Since we were newly in this next period, this exercise asked us to feel, below the conscious level, where our lives wanted to go.
Here is my sense of what my life is reaching for in this next period:
1. a bountiful, sustainable nutrient dense harvest of fruit and vegetables.
2. a way to use the Great Wheel website to advance the Great Work through literature, science and political activism.
3. a third phase (third lifetime) writing portfolio with short story writing credits as a floor for selling novels.
4. a schedule for translating and commenting on at least several books of the Metamorphoses
5. still more of a stable, wonderful marriage, regular visits and communication with kids and grandkids and friends.
6. more mutual travel opportunities with Kate.
As I work in the inner movement of my life, I can feel a quieting, a confidence that who I am and what I do is enough-no matter the outcomes. This feeling has grown stronger since Kate retired and continues to strengthen with time.
In my third lifetime I will be calm, steady, productive.
Spring New Bee Hiving Moon
Ruth has gone home. Gabe has gone home. Jon has gone home. Jen has gone home. The last of the trip’s intentions are now over. All that remains is for me to go home.
Tomorrow morning, breakfast, then in the car for the next to last day. This Ford Focus is a good car. It’s set up well for a road trip. I’ve gotten 35 mpg on average.
Trips have their own rhythms and this one has begun to turn toward home and away from traveling; now it’s a return. Returns do not have the anticipation of new adventures, new sights, but they do have something better. Returns take us home. It is only with home in mind that we can set off with confidence into the unknown. Home is the known, the safe place, the refuge.
It’s where Kate is. Where Vega, Rigel and Gertie are. Where the gardens and the orchard are. Where the study is. Where most of life happens. I’m ready to get home.
Spring Hare Moon
Several hours with granddaughter Ruth. She asks questions from her much despised car seat while the car hums on asphalt, these old ears not able to pick up much of the high pitched chatter. It tests my intelligence to appear to be listening. I want to, but even the good ear doesn’t allow it.
Once in a while: “Question. Grandpop, have you finished your book?” Yes, I have and its out to agents right now. “Agents.” They try to sell your book for you. “Oh. Does it have any pictures?” Nope. “I’ve gotten really good at visualizing when I’m reading. Question. (she actually says, question) How long is it?” About 100,000 words. “Is 100, 000 more than a million?” No, it takes 10 100,000’s to make a million. “Oh. Well, if I read your book ten times, I would get a million word medal.”
We went to the Colorado History Museum which has changed to visitor friendly exhibits. Good for kids, a bit disappointing for me. Ruth loves to set the pattern of the dynamite in a mining demonstration, then push the plunger. The patterns are complex and she remembers them perfectly each time.
Time with grandkids has a magical quality and I think it’s partly because the issue of mortality is so squarely and honestly on the table. I’ll die long before Ruth and we both know that. It gives these times together a depth and seriousness that rides below the surface of ice cream cones and bagels.
Her world is bicycles, books and imminent release from her car seat. Mine is love, legacy and creativity. Probably not that different in their essence.
And she wore me out. Time for a nap.
Spring Hare Moon
The first of three workshops has finished. This one, life context, positions you in the current period of your life. It’s been, as always, a moving and insight producing time. These workshops move below the surface and defy easy summary, but I have had one clear outcome from this one. I’m in a golden moment.
I’m healthy, loved and loving. Kate and I are in a great place and the kids are living their adult lives, not without challenges, but they’re facing those. The dogs are love in a furry form.
The garden and the bees give Kate and me a joint work that is nourishing, enriching and sustainable. We’re doing it in a way that will make our land more healthy rather than less.
The creative projects I’ve got underway: Ovid, Unmaking trilogy, reimagining faith, taking MOOCs, working with the Sierra Club, and my ongoing immersion in the world of art have juice. Still.
I have the good fortune to have good friends in the Woollies and among the docent corps (former and current). Deepening, intensifying, celebrating, enjoying. That’s what’s called for right now.