As I’ve previously mentioned, three dear friends of mine have died in the past month and a half. Yesterday I attended the memorial service for the principal I worked with during most of my career teaching kindergarten and first grade. Notice I say ‘worked with’ not ‘worked for.” For sure, Chet, was the consummate principal, but he also encouraged and  joined all of us to be better teachers and learners.


What we heard yesterday were heartfelt tributes about a complex, fun loving, serious, dedicated man. There must have been 150 people at the luncheon following this celebration of life. Everyone chatting and catching up. Clearly a one-of-a-kind happening at its best. 


So here I am, once again, yes, missing these friends whose physical presence will be no more, but primarily dwelling on their lives well lived. As Henry Frederic Amiel (1821-1881) a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic tells us: 
Life is short and
we do not have much time 
to gladden the hearts of those 
who travel the way with us. 
So be swift to love, 
make haste to be kind.

​

​​February 20th would have been my dad’s 114th birthday. Here is the email I sent to my family.
Dear Family,
        Today would have been Papa’s 114 birthday.
       If he were here today he would be so proud of everyone one us., which reminds me of a musing of his: I wish George Washington could return and I could show him around. What would he think?
     Hmm, what would I show Papa if he could be with me now? First, I would show him our family and Jim’s and my home. Then we would walk up the street to my church. Oh, I’m sure we’d visit Florence. We’d remember being there with Grammy and Alice in 1956; we’d walk around the city and visit my favorite museums, churches and restaurants.
     What is new in the world that Papa would be interested in and intrigued to explore? Certainly the technology world, and particularly the graphic arts.
     What would disappoint him? Most certainly our president’s public name calling. As you all know, Papa loved to discuss ideas, and he was comfortable voicing his opinions and listened to those of others. But he always did so showing kindness and respect, and was willing to admit that he had changed his mind. He was a model of civility and he expected his four children (and grandchildren) to be kind and polite, and to make us ever mindful of the needs of others.
     Grammy was the same way. I remember once, and only once, calling her a ‘dumb bunny.’ I can still picture her lifting her finger, looking me in the eye, and saying, “Don’t you ever talk to me again that way.” I never did.
     We are now living all over the country. I admit that I am sad that we don’t get together as we used to. I miss those of you that I hardly ever see. But, there is the technology world. I’d love to hear what you would show Papa, and the ‘words of wisdom’ that Grammy told you. I trust that the rest of you would love to hear, too.

I hope I don’t live long enough to see Major League Baseball change the game from nine innings to seven. Can you imagine what that will do to all the statistics? I gather that people aren’t staying until the end of the game anymore. The stands empty out after the seventh inning stretch. People go to take a few selfies and post on Face Book. “The game is too long,” they say. What? When I went to Ebbets field we stayed to the bitter end, and often, bitter it was. I love being involved in all nine innings. The game was never too long. Now everything is too long because it is not about the present moment but about being on the move to the next thing.  

     It’s quiet at our house right now before Christmas. Family is arriving tomorrow. This year we have a smaller tree, one in a pot to be planted after the holidays. It’s small; we have to carry it. I think about the tree my dad cut down from our woods when I was growing up. One year he decided it would only have blue lights, and I recall being a little disappointed at that. But that’s he only disappointment he ever gave me, so how lucky was I? VERY!
     When our kids were little we purchased our tree from the Boy Scouts. The lights that I bought way back then started shorting last year—they were old—so I threw them out before disaster happened. Now we have little ones, which match our little tree, and which are safe.
    Christmas traditions change, but they also stay the same. Memories through the years, and new memories being created. Very grateful!

It’s been a week since my last post. Since I try to post every other day, what’s with this mini gap? It is not due to lack of silence, solitude or simplicity in my life, but perhaps because lately I’ve had a comfortable mixture of activity and the 3Ss. In other words, time to BE, which for me means time when I don’t have to DO or THINK, and time to DO, which means time with others.
Sometimes I can’t believe how content I am in doing, or, shall I say being, nothing. In part, it is an age thing. Like any # 3 on the Enneagram, I have DONE stuff in my life. Now the challenge is to be. (Search Enneagram and learn about yourself, what number you are.)
Saturday, however, was not a being day. I attended a United Church of Christ Super Saturday event in Connecticut. One workshop was about dementia. As the leader went through the stages of dementia (in which a person a person lives backward to infancy), I was reminded of many incidents and situations with my mother toward the end of her life. I was surprised, and pleased that my siblings and I didn’t think of Mom in terms of dementia. We accompanied her in letting go, enjoying the way she was at the present moment. Dementia isn't the only story.

Four years ago my mom took her final breath, died, passed away. There are myriad ways of saying it. Died feels final and clinical; final breathe softens it. For me, however, passing away feels more like what my mom did, but I want to add ‘to a better place’, whatever that means? I don’t know, no one knows, but many of us believe that something beyond this earthly exist, and that it is good. Christianity declares it, and those of other faiths, as well as agnostics and atheists, have a sense that death is not final. For many believing that death is a big black hole is too frightening. For everyone, there are the memories.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of our 2004 Camry with 175,000 miles showing on the odometer. Jim and I are on our way to Pennsylvania to visit Emily, Tony and our grandkids. On the way we’ll stop for lunch at my sister’s. It’s a particularly a poignant time for me, because she now lives in the condo that was Mom’s home from age 80 to 90.

     Um, it just dawned on me that for the last seven years of Mom’s life, we drove this very car to visit her. Longevity comes in many flavors.

I’ve picked up If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, a gem of a book by Brenda Ueland (1891-1985) that I put down for two months before I went to Scotland and became involved in family and Camp Fisher activities. Now my life is my own again and I’m settling into my home version of solitude, and into my writing..

     I love Ueland’s message, blunt and unconventional. Just listen to this!

     “But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi—like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that every was on earth—do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them….So they dare to be idle, i.e., not to be pressed and duty driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good. For great and creative men know what is best for every man is his own freedom so that his imagination can grow in it’s own way, even if that way, to you or to me, or to policemen or churchgoers, seems very bad indeed.”

      That’s enough to ponder for the rest of the summer, or year, or a lifetime. Of course we’re not all great artists, but that’s not the point. We all have a creativity, imagination, spirit, whatever you want to call it, to nurture and express, even if only to ourselves.

     What resonates with me is the permission Ueland’s gives me, all of us, to be idle, to be free from the duties that we feel the rest of the world is pressing on us. In that idleness, experienced in solitude, we are free, free to create, but also free to let go of the judgments we have about other people. When I dare take the counter-cultural stance and go to the cottage or travel alone, I satisfy my own good. It may appear selfish, but I think of it as being honest, which is essential for inner peace, and that I dare to assert is the ultimate goal of all of us..

      Where do the memories of my artist dad fit into all of this? As my sister said at the gallery opening of his work, Dad was disciplined. It’s a given that to be good at anything we have to practice. But Dad also took time to be idle.  Again I’m reminded of all those times when I would see him sitting in a chair in the woods. Sometimes he had a sketchbook with him, but my recollection is that he just sat. I wish I could ask him what he was thinking, what his process was. But maybe the memory of him ‘perched’ there as I, absorbed in my play, ran by, is enough. Dad and I, both in our imaginations, working things out. Dad, the grownup, thinking.  Me, the active ten-year old, active, my thoughts and actions working simultaneously. Now, sixty years later, I’m more in my head although I get many of my best thoughts while walking. Regardless, whether sitting or walking,  I am idle and alone.

Florence is not silent this spring, nor during any spring for that matter. The woman who renewed my Amici degli Uffizi card, told me ‘Oh, you’ll notice a big difference when you return in the fall.’

    Easter Monday brought out not only the tourists, but the Italians. I’ve never seen any line at all to climb the Giotto’s Campanile, but there it was, a long one yesterday. Of course, if you’re not in line when it opens at 8:15, there is always a wait to climb the Duomo. There were crowds in the piazzas and on the streets, but thank goodness there are plenty of restaurants with plenty of good food. “You can’t get a bad meal in Italy,” so the saying goes.  

   Another silence breaker is construction noise. The Baptistry, taking its turn for a deep cleaning, is completely covered with scaffolding. Major repairs are still going on around the apse of the Duomo. As I sit on the terrace of the Bibliotecca Oblate, I can hear repair sounds coming from the street between me and the Duomo.

    I love these sounds of life. I resonate with the tourists; I wonder if I will walk by a student who is finding her-Self. I love these stone buildings; they exude stability, hope, and possibilities yet to be imagined by those by pass by, for the first time, or after a life time (not finished) of visits.