Requiem

Spring and Fall

to a young child

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Heaven

brevity

(Dis)Harmonies of the Universe

Cousin A and Cousin B play well with each other, as does Cousin A and Cousin C….but Cousin B and Cousin C in the same room together? Five minutes until the cat fight.

You love Friend B. You love Friend C. You love them so much, you just know an outing with Friend B and Friend C will increase the fun exponentially. After an afternoon of tap dancing between the two, you wonder what you saw in either one of them, and don’t even like yourself that much.

Today's True Story:

The socks, warm out of the dryer, are jumbled on the bed to be matched. They are fairly worn socks, and seem to have faded at different rates. Sock A doesn’t match Sock B, but Sock C looks like a perfect mate to either Sock A or B.

How does that (not) work?

City Life

17 years ago my husband took a job in Louisville, Kentucky. I planned to follow him in two months, thank goodness, because after a week he discovered Louisville (cars! people! traffic!) was not for him. He came home.

For years after that every time I had to wait briefly behind a car parked in the middle of a downtown street while its driver popped into the local bank to do a little business, I said thank you, Jesus.

Except for the UPS truck, I haven’t noticed any middle-of-the-road parking lately. Our little town has grown. Even so, traffic is rarely snarled. Still, even here, jams can happen, as noted by this report from the most recent Board of Supervisor’s meeting:

Representatives from the Browning Civic League asked for a progress report on the county's efforts to get rid of hogs in the streets of Browning. Board president Robert Moore said the county would try to eliminate the problem and would be able to give a report at the board's next meeting on Nov. 26.

The Secret: The Dark Side

Ellie told me that when she was young, her mother and stepdad decided a pet would give her something to love and would also teach her responsibility. Without asking her, they bought her a hamster. Ellie hated the hamster. It smelled bad, wasn’t at all cuddly, and she had to clean the cage every day, which sometimes she forgot to do, and then she would get in trouble. Every night she wished that hamster would die. One night she went to bed, hating the hamster as usual. “I really wished the hamster would die,” she told me, “and I could feel it, here.” She was holding her stomach and laughing. The next morning: stone cold dead hamster.

Years later her friend Tandy was going though an unpleasant divorce that was dragging on. Each day Tandy came to work with a new injustice to complain about. The day came when Tandy ran through her litany of grievances and then said, “I wish he would just disappear.”

“Maybe," Ellie said, “but you're not feeling it.”