It’s April Again!

I look forward to April every year. It’s poetry month. It’s PAD – Poem-A-Day- with Robert Brewer over at Writer’s Digest. It’s reconnecting with a few poets I’ve met there. It’s feeling creative once more. It’s looking forward to reading the prompt of the day and being challenged to produce. It’s being able to express so many cooped-up feelings. It’s mostly happy and sometimes sad and always a month of possibilities.

Day One: “F”

Future and Present

Future and present me 

to past and present you:

Do you remember how much I love all things time/space/dimension travel?

Today I heard that Beatle’s song

When I’m Sixty-Four

and I won’t be able to sing it

when I’m sixty-four

because you will always be sixty-three

and come November

I’ll be older than you

for the first time ever

***

I’m already losing my hair

like my mom

and your’s was still thick 

like your dad’s

If you were still here

we might be doing the garden

digging the weeds

We were going to scrimp and save

in our moonlight years

***

When I’m sixty-four

you’ll be forever sixty-three

and I’ll still need you

Sojourning

Birmingham, AL , September, 2016

“Displaced souls roam every city in every country.” – Ilana Manaster, One of the Crowd, Real Simple – 2017

I know what it feels like to be a displaced soul. I felt pretty much like that the whole six years we lived in Birmingham. It was a beautiful place, but it was never home. I don’t mean to dishonor Chuck when I say that, because where he was, that was home for me. But, I think he felt the same way. We both felt uprooted.

Now I’m “home”, but he’s not here, and once again I don’t quite feel at home. But it’s different, because I do have family here, and numerous friends. I’m in the town where I grew up. It’s changed a lot, but still familiar. The Maxwell House Coffee drifting across the St. Johns River smells the same. The ocean, though constantly changing, is the same. I can still drive by my childhood home and my high school.

So now, as I prepare to move for the third time in less than a year, I think about how to put down roots in Tampa. God willing, I won’t move again. I long to live there and serve God to the end of my days. To make a home for my family, my friends, and other sojourners, for I have to remind myself that, ultimately, I’m just a sojourner on this earth.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. Hebrews 11:13-14

The Valley of Vision #2: smiles of prosperity and frowns of adversity,

For right now, for everyday, there is this:

“…under all the trials that weary me, the cares that corrode me, the fears that disturb me, I can come to Thee in my need and feel peace beyond understanding!”

For now and into the future, there is this: “Every new duty calls for more grace than I now possess, but not more than is found in Thee…”

We tend to forget God during the good and easy times, so this reminds me to be thankful for all the ‘smiles of prosperity’:

“Do Thou with me, and prepare me for all the smiles of prosperity, the frowns of adversity, the losses of substance, the death of friends, the days of darkness, the changes of life, and the last great change of all. May I find Thy grace sufficient for all my needs.”

All quotes from The Valley of Vision, edited by Arthur Bennett, Canon of St. Albans Cathedral, England.

Lord Willing #2

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”;whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” – James 4:13-15

Today I came across Chuck’s Field Notes 56-week planner. There was a binder clip on the week of May 11. That was the week we moved back to Jacksonville. He’d written Mayo Clinic 8:10 appt. for May 14th. and Move in Banyon Bay for May 16. Those were probably the last things he wrote in the notebook.

It’s a notebook that you fill in all the dates yourself. So, it began December 23, 2019 and went through THIS week, the last date being January 10, 2021. He wrote every month and every date in it by hand. He was so organized and it was not full of fluff like my calendars and notebooks are (except for his notes about Bosch). He’d written all the late shifts and backups he had scheduled for 2020. Then after he’d made the final decision to retire he’d put in that date (June 1), then his last work day (April 30).

All the family birthdays were in it, even our parents who are no longer here. Some anniversaries, too. Even on the day he died he’d written my brother’s birthday and late shift.

The hard part is seeing the plans that were made but never fulfilled.

• April 24 – Avett Brothers
• June 22 – Bell Camp
• September 14 – Maine Trip
• December 16 – Anniversary 42

But, Lord willing, I’ll see the Avett Brothers in concert again one day. And, though Bell Camp wasn’t when and how we’d planned, I did have a mini-camp with the kids. And one day I hope to make that trip to New England. And, always, I’ll remember our anniversary. Lord willing.

There’s Hope For Sure

Red Mountain Park 2/22/20

 

In the middle of a very rainy winter, when it seems like spring will never come, I welcome the sunshine. I head to Red Mountain Park and am never disappointed. There, amidst the lifeless flora, I can always find some green. Sometimes a flower, even though considered a weed, peeps out below my feet to remind me that spring will come.

I find the abandoned railroad tracks where trees have grown up in the middle.

When my mind is burdened with thoughts and decisions that need to be made, I can find a calm. Though I return home with those decisions still unmade, the burden seems less. I not only have the assurance of spring, but the assurance that my future is in God’s hands, just like spring.

See, you can only live one day at a time
Only drive one hot rod at a time
Only say one word at a time
And only think one thought at a time
And every soul is alone when the day becomes night
And there in the dark if you can try to see the light
In the most pitch black shape of the loneliest shadow
Well then you ought to sleep well
‘Cause there’s hope for sure

High Steppin’/The Avett Brothers

 

 

Ray Bradbury Was Spot-On

“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. .. With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. “ – Beatty in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What insight Bradbury had here! I am still amazed at his spot-on look into the future. Now, I love a good baseball game, as long as I don’t think about it too deeply. I like to hike and swim, and I used to like to ride a bike and skate. But, I am so not a huge fan of pro sports, or even college sports around here ( sorry Alabama). I think it’s because I see what Bradbury saw – that sports has been given a much higher priority than education in many arenas. And if a kid can run or throw or win, he is often allowed special privileges and not held to the same standard as those who would rather read than race.

Oh, yes, the pursuit of happiness in full swing.

“Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want people want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.” – Beatty

Oh, Ray, do you know we even have a restaurant now called TGIF? If you listen to the radio (another entity that’s becoming extinct) it’s all about the weekend. What are you doing this weekend? How was your weekend? I have fallen into that trap, too.

But, really…….

That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecc. 1:19

Click HERE for a review of Fahrenheit 451 by Linda’s Book Bag