Monthly Archives: October 2013

Three and a half poems for Autumn

October

by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost –
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

The Wild Swans at Coole

by W.B. Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73)

by William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

It’s rather difficult to find an autumn poem that’s not tinged with melancholy. Falling leaves and cooling temperatures seem to naturally elicit somber meditations on the inexorable march of time, ever closer to death.

Today on our walk around the lake in our neighborhood, it was these more serene lines from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It that came to my mind:

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

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Best weekend ever

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby

From “April Rain Song,” by Langston Hughes

It’s been cold and grey and wet for three days straight, but I still maintain that it was a beautiful weekend. Because of the rain, my daughter’s soccer practice on Friday was canceled, her game on Saturday was canceled, and my son’s soccer tournament that had been scheduled for Saturday AND Sunday in Richmond was CANCELED! Each text or email announcing the cancellation of these events sent me into a paroxysm of unseemly jubilation. Theoretically speaking, (if I happened to be the kind of person to engage in embarrassing self-revelation), it’s possible that there may have been some fist-pumping, jiggety-jigging in place, and squeals of delight.

What fabulous things did I do with all of that time that was handed to me like a precious gift on a silver platter? We went to the grocery store to buy the pumpkin my oldest son needed for a school project. We went to the shoe store to buy much-needed new sneakers for the younger two. We went to the music store to get my daughter’s violin bow repaired. We went to the pet store to buy the only food that doesn’t make the dogs puke foamy yellow bile all over the carpets. (Always the carpets, never – God forbid – on the far easier to clean tile or hardwood). We took my daughter to get her hair cut. We went to Jiffy Lube. (Every 3,000 miles? More like every 10,000+ miles…). I got caught up on laundry, etc. etc. And yes, a million times YES! It was really and truly:  fabulous.

I didn’t take many photos this weekend, but I did record a couple snapshots in my mind to share with you. They are somewhat related insofar as they both involve food and the sweet, innocent thoughtfulness of children.

On Friday, the Helping Hands group I co-lead met for our first session of the year. This fall, our third and fourth grade kids are organizing a school-wide food drive for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. A friend who works at the bank came to talk to us about the problem of hunger in our own community. We discussed how hunger makes people crabby and makes it difficult to concentrate and to work or study. The most powerful moment of the talk came when she told us that the bank serves 26,000 people a month. To give us an idea of how many people that is, she had us visualize a line of people starting from downtown Charlottesville stretching all the way up Route 29 for 8 miles to the airport. This startling image made a big impression on us all. My friend was about to leave after her presentation when one of our students ran up to her and handed her a fistful of coins, all the money she had in her pocket, as a gift to the food bank. It was a lovely moment.

And then there was this moment that revealed to me that my daughter had also absorbed the message about the problem of hunger. On Sunday my husband was feeling a little grumpy and I asked my daughter what we should do to cheer him up. She suggested earnestly: “Maybe we could put a hunk of Jarlsburg (his favorite kind of cheese) under his pillow!”

Finally, I leave you with one actual snapshot from this weekend. This was taken during a brief break on Saturday, when instead of playing/watching soccer, we were checking items off our my list of errands at breakneck speed. First, observe the expressions on the faces of my husband and children. Now look very closely at my reflection in the window. Can you see the maniacal grin pasted on my face?

“What the heck is she so happy about?”

See? Best weekend ever!

Happy, Pt. 3

Here are my entirely arbitrary rules for compiling my list of go-to things that can perk me up when I’m feeling down. Everything on the Happy List has to be fairly specific. Nothing too vague, obvious, or insipid such as “reading a good book,” “spending time with family and friends,” or “doing kind things for others.” (As delightful as all of those things are).  “Jetting off to Monaco for the weekend” or even “spending a weekend in NYC” don’t count, but “ogling the zebra finches, who spend their days pooping on the exquisite wrapping paper that lines their equally exquisite bird cage at Caspari on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville” does. The basic requirements: specific, doable without too much planning or forethought, and free (or nearly free).

Here’s what’s in my Emergency Happy Kit: 

Visual Therapy:

  • Looking at photos of puppies on the Puppyfind website, or for more diversified animal therapy options: the Cute Overload website
  • This video of my nephew chortling with wild abandon. Watching this video will make you feel like you won the happy lottery. I can’t get the link to look pretty, but click on it and make sure you watch the best part, between seconds 30 and 34.

https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=4154171446026″ width=”720″ height=”480″ frameborder=”0″>

  • Certain photographs of my own family. This set for instance:

Retail Therapy (Closely related to Visual Therapy, because no purchase necessary to get the mood-enhancing benefit): 

  • Stationery stores. Paper, paper, paper.
  • Fabric stores work too. I don’t even know how to sew, but looking at all the different fabrics makes me inexplicably happy…I know. I don’t get it either.
  • The greenhouse at Merrifield Garden Center.
  • Browsing in the children’s picture book section of any bookstore in the evening all by myself.

Food and beverage:

  • Smelling Earl Grey tea. It’s better than drinking it. But the best of all is to alternate bites of Breyer’s natural vanilla ice cream with sips of Earl Grey tea that’s served in a pretty teacup, naturally.
  • A green tea latte from Starbucks, unsweetened. Looks vile, tastes divine.

Miscellaneous:

  • Spending an hour or two playing my ukulele and singing songs from my Daily Ukulele songbook.

OK, now it’s your turn…What gets you out of a funk? READY? GO! Please leave a comment to share what’s on your list!

Happy, Pt. 2

I am descended from a long line of forbears who, well, forbore. My maternal grandfather survived a massacre of Christians that wiped out three generations of his family in one day. During the Japanese occupation, he was repeatedly arrested and tortured. In his old age, long after he had incontestably earned the right to snooze all day long in a comfy armchair with his mouth hanging open, he would rise before dawn every single day to scale a mountain. He would scramble back down that mountain, plunge himself into a bath with large blocks of ice floating in it, and then head off to carry on the business of running a university.

Mom’s family

My maternal grandmother was also a survivor of war, occupation, and their attendant horrors and privations. She came through the experience as a formidable warrior. She made no secret of her reverence for the Spartan civilization. You know, those militaristic people who would leave sickly infants to die of exposure on the sides of mountains and who would starve and literally whip the small children who passed muster into shape to toughen them up to be soldiers? Yes, those were her kind of people.

Dad’s mother and four brothers who survived to adulthood

My paternal grandfather died young, leaving my grandmother to struggle for survival. Some of her children succumbed to disease and malnutrition. It’s entirely understandable then, that having passed through the crucible of unimaginable hardships, my dad would emerge on the other side to preach the gospel of “Where in the Bible does it say you have to be happy?” on Christmas Eve.

Less comprehensible is how I turned out, given my genetic inheritance. The only explanation I can think of is that the gene for stoicism must have skipped a generation. If you’ve been reading along, you already know that the proximity of a spider is enough to destroy my happiness, (though in my defense, it was a shockingly big, stripy, furry one). My latest tragedy is that the internet has been erratic and agonizingly slow at my house. I’m telling you, it’s been making me gnash my teeth in despair. I can’t pretend to be like my steely ancestors. Me? I yearn for happiness like a lovelorn adolescent. I stalk it like a craven addict looking for her next hit. When I find it, I greedily clutch it to my chest and swat away anyone or anything that tries to snatch it out of my white-knuckled fists.

Just as it doesn’t take much to destroy my happiness, it doesn’t take much to make me happy either. For me, it can sometimes be merely the successful avoidance of discomfort. For example, every time I stay home while the rest of my family goes hiking or camping=pure bliss! (Pretend I’m homeless by sleeping in a tent on the cold hard ground with bugs and no running water or AC when I could be in lounging in the comfort of my own bed watching trashy reality TV? Puh-leeze! That would be messed up)! Sometimes I find happiness in those sublime everyday moments of grace, such as when I finally extract a piece of corn that’s been stuck in my teeth forever, or when I experience the satisfaction of  peeling away a really long strip of dead skin from my heel. (What? Don’t even try to tell me that doesn’t make you happy, too)!

And even though my claims on happiness are really quite modest, every once in a while, it will flip me the bird and flounce off like a faithless strumpet. I’m left feeling bereft and hopeless…It’s in those dark moments, that I have to exert a little more effort to find a way to drag happiness back into my corner. And here, at long last, is where I’m going with this long and meandering, multi-part post…What are your strategies for finding happiness? I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours. More on this tomorrow.

Happy, Pt. 1

For many years my dad was the minister of a Korean congregation that was part of a much larger American church in Northern Virginia. Listening to my dad, (a.k.a. The Easter Island Head), give a sermon was always something of a revelation. Six days out of seven, he was a soft-spoken man of very few words. Behind the pulpit, however, he would transform into someone we barely recognized. His voice would thunder, swoop, and dive. He would gesticulate, he would lean forward, he would hiss. Even his silences were mesmerizing. My siblings and I could only understand a few words of Korean here and there, but such was his oratorical prowess that even we would be swept up in the dramatic ebb and flow of his sermon along with his enthralled congregation of native speakers.

One Christmas Eve he was asked to preach to the American congregation. The large sanctuary was overflowing with families dressed in their festive Sunday best. Their eyes shone in the candlelight and their cheeks were rosy as they squeezed into pews draped with ropes of fragrant fir boughs. There was a palpable sense of joyful anticipation as the congregation settled in to hear the familiar and well-loved Nativity story. As for me and my siblings, we were glad that we would at last have the opportunity to understand every word of our father’s sermon!

My dad has always been an iconoclast. Never was this more obvious than on that Christmas Eve, when he eschewed the Bible passages one might reasonably expect to hear on such an occasion for something far more unconventional…No glad tidings of great joy, no babe lying in a manger, no lion lying down with a lamb for my father. Instead, he chose the passage from the book of Revelations that talks about the breaking of the seven seals and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. You know, the one with flaming swords, earthquakes, cataclysms, blood and slaughter? In short: all the ingredients for a heartwarming and uplifting Christmas Eve service! One memorable line in particular will forever be etched into the very marrow of our bones. We invoke it at suitable moments to this day. At the climax of my father’s sermon, we heard in the thunderous intonation we knew so well from his Korean services: “Where in the Bible does it say you have to be happy?!“

Look who’s come back to wreck our home life and destroy our happiness.

As I was leaving for work this morning I found my son cowering in a corner of the garage. He was whimpering in sheer terror because of this:

GAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Yes. This three inch monstrosity was ever so casually hanging out in my garage this morning, terrorizing my child and laying waste to the sweet innocence of his childhood.

THE HELL?!

I guess I didn’t make it perfectly clear that he’s not welcome around here when I hurled him into the woods shrieking profanities in the dark night the last time he showed up in our lives. Before we could chase him out of the garage he scuttled under the car and disappeared. Don’t think I didn’t try to run over him as I backed out of the garage. Unfortunately, he’d already taken cover in a corner somewhere. There he sits lurking, just waiting for the opportunity to come back into the house. So I guess I won’t be sleeping ever again.

Weekend Snapshots 7

Just a few photos from the weekend…

Saturday

The referee didn’t show up for my daughter’s soccer game…

You’re kidding me! No ref?

…so her brother got to do the job!

After the game, my girl celebrated her team’s win and tried to help the ref cool off at the same time:

We drove on to Carter Mountain Orchard to pick some apples and to admire some of the very best views of Charlottesville.

We caught this beautiful sunset after dinner:

Sunday

We woke up at the crack of dawn and then drove for more than two hours, literally through Wilderness, to get to my son’s soccer game. I was bursting with pride, because I managed to get lost for only fifteen minutes! Sure, I got the boys there fifteen minutes after they were supposed to arrive, but they weren’t the last to arrive. I call that: a WIN!

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The boys played their hardest in brutal 90 degree weather, but fell to their opponents in the end.

You win some, you lose some!

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Spiders

A whole lot of shrieking going on…

I may have given the false impression that I am a friend of spiders when I published my Goodbye, Ned post. Ned was truly an “itsy, bitsy spider.” He was so delicate and wispy, he might have been a piece of lint. You couldn’t help but love him just a little bit. Ned was an exception. Generally, I hate spiders. 

I’ve been having nightmares ever since reading a recently published New York Times article about black widow spiders, written by someone who lives in my county. He had to be hospitalized and suffered excruciating pain after being bitten by a black widow spider who had been hiding out in a shoe he’d left out on his front porch. (Before I read this article, which is now forever seared into my cranial folds, my husband and kids used to always leave their shoes on the front porch too). From this article I learned how to identify a black widow’s web. He describes them as “messy and close to the ground.” Kind of like this web that’s right outside the door on the floor of my deck, wouldn’t you say?

IMG_6117

Currently in the same vicinity, but suspended from another, higher web is THIS:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

The only reason I’m not having a full-blown panic attack right now is that, at least for the time being, this particular spider is still outside my house.

Remember the derecho we had a couple summers ago? We lost power for one long, hot, miserable week. In a fruitless attempt to avoid simmering in our own sweat, all five of us slept in our basement. My husband and I squeezed into the small bed that’s down there. The boys slept on the two couches and my daughter slept on an air mattress at the foot of the bed. The low point of that week was a late night encounter with a spider. The incident revealed (confirmed)? that I am a terrible wife and human being. It may also be the reason why our neighbors cast pitying (disapproving)? looks in our direction.

Late one night after the kids were all fast asleep, my husband and I were chatting in bed in the pitch black. Suddenly, he interrupted me and in a panicky voice that I had never before and have never since heard him use, he said, “Oh no. Oh no. There’s something crawling on my leg. Turn on the flashlight!”

I groped around for the flashlight and turned it on. A spider that looked very much like this was on his leg:

We both shrieked simultaneously.

“Get it off me!” he screamed.

The moment of truth that would define our relationship forever had arrived. It was my chance to prove to my husband the great depths of the love, devotion, and loyalty I felt for him.

I leapt out of bed and said, “I CAN’T! You have to do it yourself!”

“Please! You have to help me!” he pleaded as he lay there frozen in horror.

I’m not completely heartless. I ran to the bathroom and got a huge wad of toilet paper. I stood as far away from the bed as I could and threw it at him. Instead of getting the spider with the tissue, however, he decided to shake it off his leg. It jumped onto the bed and I shrieked again. If we lost sight of it, we’d have to move to a new house and maybe even to a new country, because I would never ever be able to sleep again knowing that this monstrosity was crawling around somewhere in our house.

There was a cup of water nearby.

“Empty this out! We (and by “we” I obviously meant “you”) have to catch it!”

He ran to empty out the water. He returned and caught the spider with the glass.

I handed him a book and he began to slide it under the glass. Just as he was about to trap it, the spider managed to escape. It jumped onto the floor, RIGHT NEXT TO MY DAUGHTER’S FACE! (Miraculously, she and the boys remained asleep throughout the whole ordeal).

I completely lost it. I started shrieking like a banshee.

“GET IT! GET IT! GET IT!” I screamed at my poor, poor, shell-shocked husband.

He managed to trap the spider again and this time he was able to get the book under it.

I followed behind him with the flashlight as he walked up the stairs with our furry captive. He opened the front door and started to release it on the front porch.

“Are you CRAZY? He’ll come back for us!” I said as I snatched the jerry-rigged spider jail from him. I marched to the end of our driveway, crossed the road, and hurled the spider into the woods, shrieking at the top of my lungs: “AND DON’T F*$%ING COME BACK!!!” Honestly, I don’t know where that word came from. I swear I’m not one to use profanities. My only explanation for this lapse is that gallons of adrenalin were coursing through my veins. As my words reverberated in the otherwise silent night, it occurred to me how this might come across to our neighbors, who might reasonably assume that I was kicking my husband out of the house after a particularly vicious domestic quarrel. And while I’m clearly a bad wife, as I have just revealed, I’m not that bad. Am I?

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