What I Learned From Spring

 

 Let me be forsythia

 by Leslee Clapp

Let me be forsythia

around an old foundation the land has forgotten---

white clapboard house, red barn, kitchen garden

Rhode Island Reds, Holsteins, Clydesdales and China hogs.

Yet forsythia

planted in 1910 by starry-eyed newly weds

beside their new house on a just-born dairy farm

still riots into gold every year.

Let me be that bane of gardeners

called Snow-On-The-Mountain,

variegated or jade green that burrower

who tunnels under rich soil or poor

to thrust from the ground at every bare spot

walk way or driveway, sun or shade

any fallow speck,

planted by those young dreamers when the last century was new.

As Snow-On-The-Mountain

I can’t be eradicated by Captan or

Imidan or any other form of DDT

or something more socially acceptable

because I divide to conquer

and ride the weeding hoe on to the vegetable patch.

Let me be bee balm

 or lemon balm

or mint.

Pacasandra,

creeping myrtle,

vinca,

morning glory,

I will thrive in the dust

of those who planted

never caring who sees my, red or white

or purple or yellow blooms.                                                               

What I Learned From The Cat

I should be more like the cat.

 

 She jumps up. I pet her and tell her she’s wonderful and she closes her eyes and purrs.  I think she’s grinning too. I usually type with a wireless keyboard in my lap instead of a stripped cat. But I can’t really get any work done. 

So I pet her then gently put her on the floor. She leaves the office then comes back and insists she must sit in my lap. So then we go through the whole thing again. This has happened four times this morning. I can’t work with a cat in my lap and she can’t find a comfortable spot in this whole house except in my nice warm lap. 

So how many times have I been too polite or proud to ask for a hug when I need one? Stripey (can you guess what she looks like from her name?) seems to think comfort is her due. My lap exists to make her feel comforted, warm and loved. 

She never questions her right to be petted and loved. She never thinks she is a burden or that she is taking up my valuable time. She wants/ needs a hug and some contact so she makes herself at home. She doesn’t care if I’m writing the next great American novel.

I am determined to be more like the cat. So the next time I see you get ready. If I need a hug I’m going to ask for one. I hope you need one too, because you’re going to get one back. 

What I Learned From The Resident Child

There is someone I look at and smile. I mean I can’t help it. When I see her I smile. When I think of her I smile. She is her own person, running on what she calls, “aloha time.” I think I’ve got her figured out then she does something surprising and delightful. She just had a birthday—her twenty-sixth—and we all went roller skating.  

I even roller skated. I was a little shaky at first but then I did okay as I moseyed around the floor. She slowed down for a moment to skate with me. To let me know I wasn’t forgotten.  It was lovely to see the Resident Child so happy like a little kid as all her twenty something friends skated with her. Nice to see that the doctrine of Never Grow Up has been passed successfully to the next generation.  

She says she’s the Resident Child because she lives just minutes away in the Hill Section of Scranton. She works hard and loves the people around her. Loves them. Cooks for them. Hangs out with them. Is there for them. 

Two Thanksgivings ago she was at my house at 8:30 on Wednesday night. She let it slip that she hadn’t been to the grocery store to buy things for the Thanksgiving feast. I nearly had heart failure. But you know what? Dinner was wonderful the next day. She pulled it off just like she always does.

I think the resident child knows how to live in the moment.  If the company arrives at six or seven, she knows how to roll with the flow instead of getting all bothered. 

She actually had dinners at her house where she didn't know what her friends were bringing. She didn’t say, “how about a salad,” to one, and “how about potatoes,” to another one.

If everybody brought dessert that is what they all ate. The point was being with the people, not eating the food.

The resident child knows how to enjoy herself. Skating or cooking or just hanging out with me as we watch “mindless TV.” When she is sad or bothered she is articulate and shows her deep compassionate heart. 

All hospitable people should take a lesson from her. And all of us would like to say, “Happy Birthday Anny and many, many, more. 

Aloha.

What I Learned From A Nun With A Coffee Pot

I want to be like Sister Regina when I grow up. She is a Passionist Nun that served us retreat-goers recently. She and the other Sister’s made sure we had clean sheets, a lovely quiet place to meet and think. They gave us food and coffee. 

If you know me you know I always have a travel cup in hand. It’s decaf coffee. (But I never say so. That would be bad for my image.) So when the Sisters asked if we wanted coffee I of course said yes, decaf please. 

I never pay attention to how coffee is made out in public, but the Sisters had to bring the hot water to the big coffee machine and pour it in. Then it dripped through and presto! there was decaf coffee! Which lubricates my brain. 

So I was waiting for the coffee when the swinging kitchen doors were bumped open and here comes Sister Regina with the hot water to dump into the top of the machine. 

She’s elderly enough to use one of those walker’s with a seat on it. So she is pushing the walker and the hot water pot is perched on the seat as she pushes it along toward the big pot at the other end of the dining room.  

She is making coffee for me! For me an able-bodied 56 year old woman who could have made the coffee for myself!  I knew I couldn’t offer to help her. She was determined to help me. To do her job. So I stood in awe as she shuffled along to the coffee pot. I remembered to thank her and drank my java gratefully. 

I want to be as persistent when I grow up. I want to find a way to keep doing what I am called to do. I want to be as determined and useful as Sister Regina. And smile about it all just like she did.  

What I Learned Listening to My Nose

At my physical theraphy the other day one of the therapists put on the sound track to The Big Chill. It has some great songs on it, a lot of oldies I listened to at the Clarion pool when I was a kid.

My mother dropped us off at the pool and we swam the afternoon away. Every so often, the lifeguards would blow the whistle. We groan and get out of the pool and sit quietly on the edge of the pool with our feet out of the water. I remeber the whole place quieted down. The head lifeguard, a barrel shaped, hairy guy, named Norm, wouldn't let us get back in the water until we were silent.

I don't know how he did it. Now that I think of it, he probably just wanted a couple minutes of peace and quiet. Because when he blew that whistle signaling the end of the time-out, a couple hundred kids hit the water squealing.

Songs like "The Tracks of My Tears" and "Give Me Good Lovin;'" played on WWCH, our top forties radio station and blared out across the water. I never knew I even heard those songs, I just swam. I just dove and jumped and did hand stands while the music played on.

So the other day while I walked on the tread mill and used the weights as the Bill Chill soundtrack played it took me right back.  I could see that skinny kid in the red one piece suit racing her friends to the deep end. Lessie (me at nine or ten?) really had fun in that pool. And that music came complete with a whiff of chlorine.

How happy,  that once upon a time everything was right with the world if I just swam like a dolphin across the blue chlorine of the town pool with no thought in my head except to be there in that splashy chlorine moment. 

What I Learned Listening to Jazz

I could rattle off some jazz names, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ahmad Jamal, Christian McBride. I could rattle off some titles, and maybe even a record label. I could tell you that one of my favorite things is to listen to jazz on my computer when WRTI plays it at 6pm every night.

I could tell you my daughters like Billie Holiday singing ign Dem Der Eyes, and I like Cherokee and Take the A Train. 

But don't ask me about composition or to even tell the difference between a saxophone and a clarinet 100% of the time. Don's ask me who influenced who or who is playing what by just hearing them play. I really like jazz, but I really don't know much.

And I think I will keep it that way. If I just like listening then there is no pressure to remember anything, I can float away on the music without wracking my poor brain to pass a self -imposed quiz about the music. Jazz can be a hobby that is fun not serious and I can feel whatever I want to feel, because I don't know what I'm supposed to feel.

I have developed no critical capacity and have no grading scale for jazz. In this case ignorance is pretty close to bliss. The music speaks to me. Depending on the piece it makes me sad, happy, thrilled, amazed, nostalgic. It can make me want to dance or sing or cry. I have a good time with it and I think that's where I'm going to keep it. So play on and I'm smile and listen and not worry about my expertise.