~ Conversation with my son ~

I was sitting in a big chair in my husband’s den, watching him play darts when the phone rang.



Me (having looked at Caller ID): Centre of the Universe, how may I direct your call?

Son: Um, WHERE have I reached?

Me: The Centre of the Universe.

Son: Oh, then I'd like to speak with Jesus please.

Me: I'm sorry sir, Jesus is unavailable at the moment. May I take a message for Him?

Son: Yes. Tell Him the King of Egypt called and he'd like his robe back.

Me: The King of Egypt called and he'd like his robe back?

Son: Yes.

Me: Alright, and would you please tell the King of Egypt he has a hair appointment on Monday at four o'clock?

Son: Monday at four? Sweet. I'll tell him. Oh, and one more thing ma'am....

Me: Yes?

Son: Would you please tell Jesus I can't make the board meeting, that I will be in a supper meeting with the people at Clairsville?

Me: You have a supper meeting with the people at Clairsville, right.

Son: Thank you, ma'am. Have a nice evening.

Me: You're welcome sir. Have a nice evening.



I wish I had captured the expression on my husband’s face after I ended the phone call. It was one of incredulous confusion. I smiled sweetly at him. He said, “What WAS that? Translation, please?”

Translation: Son won't be home for supper, he's at Clair's house, and Mum made an appointment for a hair cut, as requested.

I love that boy’s guts!

(still laughing)

~ Half An Hour ~

Half an hour. Not a long time, really...unless you are holding your breath, then half an hour is an eternity. Einstein was right about Relativity, you know. He was right about a lot of things, that's why they have called him a genius. I don't know that he was a genius so much as he was a thinker. He thought things all the way through. Too many people don't do enough thinking.

But that's just my opinion.

Then again, my family tells me I think too much. They tell me I ask too many questions, too. They ask me why I need to know so many things. I ask them how their questioning my questioning is different from my questioning everything else. They tell me they are late for something they forgot to do...somewhere else...somewhere I am not.

.:shrug:.

I had my coat on at 7:40 this morning, was headed out the door to collect the last of the Remembrance Day wreaths and poppy trays from local businesses before tomorrow's ceremony. About halfway across the front porch, I realised that none of the places I had to collect from would be open until at least nine o'clock...and some places not until ten.

(slap to the forehead)

Right then. Now what?

Half an hour on, I had checked my email, answered my brother, sent out a request, increased my eBay bid on a silk shrug, read several news articles, and swallowed a cup of tea before it was properly cool enough to drink.

Right then. Now what?

A call from work asking if I could come in early - I would, but there is the matter of the wreaths and trays, which I can leave to collect in about half an hour. The process of collecting the final few will take, perhaps, and only because they are located in businesses clustered together in the downtown core, about half an hour.

So you see where my Fixation o' the Day has risen from...this portion, this allotment of time. It isn't even a complete measure...no. By its' own admission, it is only half of the full, and no more. There seems, though, to be some pride taken in that. Then again, perhaps it is only my imagination.

Regardless, these half hours, these thirty minute blocks, seem to have already paced off the length of my day, seem to have marched in stilted, checked strides, the fun I am to take. Half an hour. Halfanhour. One half hour following another like footprints in a muddy garden, stepping off the length of this Monday just ahead of me, in no real hurry to get there first...if at all.

Perhaps we shall arrive together at the end of the day, all these half-hours and I. Or perhaps I will come in behind them. Perhaps I shall lose them over the course of the day as they become distracted, and find something more interesting to occupy themselves with than What I Am Doing Today.

Where are they going? What will they see that I am missing? Did they, I wonder, visit Albert Einstein one moody November morning and, if so, did they accompany him the length of his day? Or did they, rather, weary of his thinking, his questioning, and wander off to see what was happening somewhere else?

The heartbeat of the clock - tick, tock, tick, tock - listen...like the sound of footfalls....it is time walking on....I think I ought to follow...

Oh, look...the writing of this piece took half an hour. Whaddya know about that, eh?

Peace ~

~ There is a Moment ~

There is a moment, driving through the blackness of pre-dawn, when stars and sky and earth become one, where my headlights, or those of my vehicle, anyway, push forward into what seems like nothingness, illuminating the momentary existence of rock and tree, then sweeping past and on, returning those things, relegating them to the void once more.  

And so I press onward, forward, and ahead, until I reach, quite suddenly, that blueing space where definition begins, where form shifts and solidifies, where the upper becomes sky, where the lower becomes earth, and where the middle takes shape, becoming more something than nothing, less nothing than something.

The colours in this place have no name - not ink, not midnight (for surely it is not that), not even dawn, for the light has yet to break.  In this nameless place, this nameless space, my breath is drawn in more measured portions, my shoulders bear no burden, and my eyes perceive only beautiful clarity.  In this nameless space, this nameless place, I find myself smiling in the presence of God.  

It is at that moment the day, The Day, begins.

Peace ~

~ The Conversion ~

My laptop is ailing. Dying, in fact. It is struggling and groaning and is, I fear, not long for this world. I lamented (yet again) the impending demise of my trusty Wordsmithing anvil the other night, and my husband asked (yet again) whether I was finally ready to shop for a new one.

Finally, I was.

My brother has been trying for years to persuade me to make the move from PC to Mac. So far, I have resisted. My husband finally convinced me to take my brother’s advice, and so we went shopping for a MacBook. Online. On my old laptop. The bitterness of such irony, eh? We sat together for hours, comparing, learning, watching the tutorials I had already watched half a dozen times (but don’t tell my husband or brother), and at last, having made my choice, I was ready to place my order. “You should call your brother first,” advised my husband before disappearing to practice darts.

I called my brother.

My brother was excited to learn I had finally seen the light and was about to make The Conversion. My brother was not, however, excited to learn I had chosen the saucy black MacBook that is a step up from the one he has. We may be 44 and 41 years old, but the competition between the engine and the caboose has not diminished in our more than four decades together. Remind me to tell you about our cameras some time. (chuckle)

Anyway, I walked through the order process with my brother, ending up with free this and bonus that, and went to bed that night a little poorer, but all together a very happy girl. I had, after all, a shiny new MacBook on the way….a saucy black MacBook, no less, of which my brother was jealous.

Some moments are too perfect not to savour.

It turns out the items in my order were all shipped separately, so I clicked the various tracking numbers thirty times a day to see where my new toys were. Kanshun, Shanghai, Anchorage, Newark, Memphis, Mississauga, Edmonton…….and…..here? No. Everything sort of stalled once it hit Alberta. Except the mouse – the mouse arrived in record time…but just the mouse, nothing more. I stood in the Post Office staring at the little white thing in my hand and, the absolute picture of dejection, said, “A mouse? Just…a mouse? What’m I gonna do with a mouse??”

It was so sad.

Two days ago I received a text message from my brother: “Has it arrived yet?”

I responded: “Well, the website says they were delivered at noon yesterday, but I don’t have them. I don’t know where they were delivered, I just have a mouse.”

Now, you know that I love a good mystery - mysteries are intriguing and fascinating - but not, I have learned, when shiny new saucy black MacBooks are involved. Mysteries under such circumstances are neither good nor interesting. They are, in fact, not very good at all.

Finally, finally, finally, today I was able to send this text message to my brother: “It is very shiny and it is very black.”

He responded: “Did you hear the angels singing when you opened it?”

When I stop laughing, I will tell him that I did, indeed, hear the angels singing…and then I heard them laughing because they know I have commitments that will keep me from introducing myself to my shiny new saucy black MacBook until the day after tomorrow.

At the earliest.

Bother!

Peace ~

~ 'Bye for now ~

My Uncle Lloyd was buried today.

At least, the part of him that most would recognise as my Uncle Lloyd was.

We know otherwise.

The man who was my Uncle Lloyd has gone on to other things, other places…and we have not. We weep, we keen, we sob until our bellies heave…and he remains gone. Will we ever run out of tears?

For as much as I understand these things, these life circles, these life cycles, I rage at them, they chafe. My aunt has lost her best friend. My mother has lost her hero. I cannot even say what I have lost the sorrow is so deep.

The kindest man, the most patient, the gentlest man, the most honest, is gone from the world. We are all poorer for it.

Thank you, Father, for the very great blessing of having such a man as an influential force in my life.

God keep you, Uncle Lloyd. In your words, the last words you said to me, “Bye for now.”

Peace ~

~ Of Diggers and Visiting Bees...and Tess ~

I am stuck. I am writing assigned pieces and I have gotten myself stuck. Can't go forward, can't go backward, I'm just sitting here, spinning my wheels, shifting gears, rocking myself deeper into the mire.

I am stuck.

What's a girl to do when she gets herself stuck? Well, if you're this girl, and you happen to have gotten yourself stuck in late spring, you go outside and dig in the dirt.

I have brand new diggers, fancy-schmancy stainless steel diggers received as a Christmas gift, diggers that came, as all diggers do, with the expectant hope of green and growing things…so…I take myself out to dig in the dirt, expectant and hopeful.

As I nestle our new lilies into the bed at the bottom of the garden, and wonder whether clover roots are knitted or crocheted (growl, scowl, frown, tug, pull, wrestle), a bee settles nearby, and a gentle commotion at the fence alerts me to the presence of Tess, our neighbour's dog.

Tess likes to visit while we garden. She leans through the small spaces between the fence boards and tells us stories, mostly about how lonesome she is and how many treats she has not had. We don't believe her for a minute (she shares her home with children), but she is so sweet and earnest that we humour her and tell her how sorry we are for the ill treatment she perceives she is subjected to.

Today, Tess pushes her nose through the fence and tells me a very sad tale of loneliness and woe. I have heard this particular story before, but I scratch her chin and try very hard to look in the direction of the visiting bee so she does not see that I am rolling my eyes.

Before long Tess’ account has ended, the lilies have been settled, the knitted (or maybe crocheted) clover has been eliminated from one corner of one bed, my diggers have been properly dirtied., and the visiting bee has moved on to someone else's garden. I scoop weeds into the barrow, slap my gloves together, pull several thistle prickles from my wrists, scrub my hands, and return to my assigned pieces, which I had abandoned in the mire an hour previously.

Curiously, the mire seems to have receded. I sit down to my assigned pieces and find that while I was out digging in the dirt, all trace of ‘stuck’ disappeared…and I write…

Peace ~

~ Hunting with The Big Gun ~

Hornets make poor photography subjects.

I know this to be true because I followed one around my back yard last night for more than five minutes, fancy new camera at the ready, eye to the viewfinder, hand on the focus ring of The Big Gun, my fancy new 300mm lens. The hornet tested my crabapple blossoms, he tested my dianthus blooms, he tested my bergenia flowers, he tested my patience. He lit long enough only for me to locate him, never long enough to capture his fearsome image.

Still, he was lovely after his own fashion, with his fierce white brows knit in a ferocious frowning ‘V’.

Lovely, if ill mannered.

The impression he left was rather less than stellar.

My daughter says perhaps he would have been better behaved had he been wearing his yellow jacket, a dinner jacket. Perhaps. All I know is that, arrayed as he was, he behaved very poorly indeed, rather like a wayward child, like a primadonna – spoiled and indulged.

Not like tulips which are far better behaved, far more civilized, and which make marvellously compliant subjects for a gal itching to test the features of her fancy new camera and, especially, new Big Gun.

Plus, as you may see for yourself, tulips do not frown.

Peace ~