29 bar steep rise 29.87 0mph W windchill 29<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First Quarter Moon of Winds<\/p>\n
Got to thinking about dull gray days.\u00a0 Aunt Roberta days, as we used to call them.\u00a0 Aunt Roberta would always begin her correspondence with, “It’s\u00a0a dull gray day.”\u00a0 Aunt Roberta, like my Aunt Barbara and my Aunt Marjorie suffered from bi-polar disorder.\u00a0 It hit me yesterday or the day before, the day it was dull and gray, that dull, gray days are March days.\u00a0 They signal a change in the weather.\u00a0 The upper atmosphere gets filled with water, clouds form.\u00a0 Later in the month it will rain and not long after, with the snow gone and the ground beginning to thaw, the first green shoots will head toward daylight.\u00a0 The dull, gray days of March\u00a0are a sign of a change in the weather, a change for the better.<\/p>\n
Granted, the dull gray days of November presage the upcoming winter, but even in that instance the harvest has come in, the plants have died back and we’re ready for the white, fallow season.<\/p>\n
Each one of them Aunt Roberta in Arlington, Aunt Marjorie in Muncie and my Aunt Barbara, often confined to the State Hospital in Richmond, Indiana were important to me as I grew up.\u00a0 Aunt Roberta raised 5 wonderful girls, all my first cousins and I visited them often when I was young.\u00a0 Aunt Marjorie was a great cook and a long suffering wife, married to my Uncle Ike who was a gambler and a hustler, and a hell of a good guy.\u00a0 Aunt Barbara gave my Bullfinch’s Mythology when I was young.\u00a0 She was my Mom’s favorite, I think.<\/p>\n
These three women sisters, mothers and aunts affected in a positive way many lives.\u00a0 Daughters and sons, nephews and nieces, sisters and husbands all benefitted from their love and direction.\u00a0 No person is their diagnosis.\u00a0 They are a person first and last.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each one of them, in their own way, succumbed to bipolar disorder.\u00a0 Aunt Barbara lived the end of her life in a world of illusion.\u00a0 Aunt Marjorie starved herself to death and Aunt Roberta was in and out of Richmond, too, and finally faded away.<\/p>\n
I miss each one of them, as I miss my mom.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, they are with me in spirit, but that isn’t the same as in person.\u00a0 It just isn’t the same, yet it’s no less important.<\/p>\n
When the weather turns dull and gray I’ll think of Aunt Roberta and her sisters, but now with the knowledge that after the dull and the gray comes the green or the white.\u00a0 Glory and peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
29 bar steep rise 29.87 0mph W windchill 29 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First Quarter Moon of Winds Got to thinking about dull gray days.\u00a0 Aunt Roberta days, as we used to call them.\u00a0 Aunt Roberta would always begin her correspondence with, “It’s\u00a0a dull gray day.”\u00a0 Aunt Roberta, like my Aunt Barbara and my Aunt Marjorie suffered … Continue reading A Dull Gray Day<\/span>