You Learn Something New Every Day

My mother used to say, when surprised by some revelation, trivial or otherwise, “You learn something new every day.”  I suppose all mothers say that at one time or another.  Today turned out to be chock full of things I hadn’t known.  In several different conversations and observations, this is what I learned today.

That moles are carnivores, and voles are herbivores, that you can catch voles in your garden by setting a mouse trap with a tulip bulb ( I don’t know what you do if it is off season for tulip bulbs), then put a clay flower pot upside down over the trap – they like the dark of course.  Her friend caught nineteen, count ‘em nineteen, voles in her garden that way. 

I learned that a man with a slice of pizza who doesn’t know the glass door is closed, will give himself a hard knock to the head when he tries to walk thru it, but then will go back for napkins, peel his slice off the door and continue on his way.  I learned that two sixty-something women, having observed the “man with a slice”  routine will laugh so hard they can’t even speak, and then both compare it to being ten years old in church with the giggles.

I’ve learned that a fine young man can be a solace to me as a friend; that he expects naught and listens with respect, that I can make him laugh even as I offer sound advice and encouragement, that we have a knack for mutual philosophizing that crosses the age barrier; I learned that his best friend, his only friend, has moved South and he indeed misses him, though he would never verbalize that fact. I learned that he is more vulnerable and more timid than I realized, and that he has a trust in me that I will respect and treasure.

I learned, as my hair was being pulled and snipped and chopped, that a beautiful young women had, in the hair wizard’s opinion, gone “from a ten to a zero”  when he observed her toenails, long and curved and unpolished. “She looked like a salamander!” he kept repeating.  “Such a beautiful girl, I almost told her what a turn-off it was, but it wasn’t my place.”

Six Degrees of Separation?

There are days when serendipity and weird six degrees of separation circumstances appear.  These days also seem to include re-occurrences of peculiar words, not often used and not even inter-related, but there they are – begging to be noticed. 

The other day, “Q” words followed me everywhere; words that were read, or said, or seen or heard as an afterthought, by me or someone else. There was quietude, a peaceful utterance; quality, in advertising, quicken and quickbooks, then quinoa in a recipe, and then, just when the day was almost done, just when one decided that this obsession with the appearance of “Q” words was too weird even for me, well then “queue” appeared.  No, no, not like the line for the cinema, but rather in a new way (at least previously unknown to me) A queue, I learned, is the Chinese braid worn by men, under the Mandarin regime.  If they were found to be braidless, they would lose their life.   After 1910 or thereabouts, the ruling was abolished.  Then my mind started to wander……Q-tip!  Quintessential!  Quixotic!   What a fine letter Q is! Or is it…queer?   Downton Abbey referred to the Queen’s honor (of course).  This morning, the ducks quacked, the geese squawked…a friend remarked on her quince tree blossoms, even posted it on Facebook.

 And then, the random lunch conversation with the new staff member, on the same day as the “Q” ness.

After following her trajectory from Manhattan to California and back to Manhattan again, she said offhandedly, “ Oh, but I was born in Queens (the Q rears its stately head) and I lived there till I was seven.”  Whereabouts I asked?  “Elmhurst”…………whaaaa?  We learned that we’d gone to the same parish grammar school, though she was a few years behind me.  How does life work, that 50 years after the fact, in an upstate town, at a job, sitting in the dim kitchen, you are speaking to a person who walked the same halls as you?  So very queer.

 

Smiling in the Rain

Saturday, no Friday it is.  When I take a day off, even if it is with a distinct purpose, like getting ready for the yard sale, I get my days mixed up.  The rain is torrential, and relentless.  At times so heavy, one stops to wonder what that sound is….until you look out the window.  This morning, briefly, I had a happy-silly moment.  J and I were schlepping old (now touted as mid-century) furniture from over at the storage space above his shop, and we were using the ride on lawn mover, with the little cart behind it.  Considering the uphill climb to the shop and the weight of the Mediterranean 70’s furniture, it did mighty fine, the little cubcat. 

Meanwhile, he rode it back after we loaded it and I would walk back to help him off load and then back again, so it’s not exactly faaaar, but maybe a couple of city blocks, and hey it was raining as well.  My hair, washed this morning, was expanding like yeast on my head, and my boots were soaked thru.  But it was warm enough so not so bad.  Except, by the third time, as J started it up after unloading, I clambered into the back, sitting on top of the wet sheets and stryofoam.  “I’m riding this time”  I said  “ok” he answered and he took off, then started shouting “wheeeee” and doing loops across the lawn till I was dizzy and started yelling; then he straightened out and we began puttering.  How lovely this rainy May day is!  The pink dogwood is blooming and dripping, the grass so green, it’s almost embarrassing, everything is full and wet and green and the rain softly falling, and I held onto both sides of the cart as we bounced along slowly and I looked up and let that rain do it’s magic – they say it’s good for the complexion!

How Many Signs of Spring

How many signs of spring can be found on a May day?

The brazen ants appear from nowhere, heading towards your food
You swipe them away; they hit the floor and go on about their business
The scent of viburnum blooms, thick and sweet and spicy and yes, sexy, sultry
The smell rolls around the corner on a May breeze,
compels you to drop the rake and search out the source.
Ah, yes, you’d forgotten that scent, and there it is,
the bulky bush heavy, laden with the sweet clusters, poised between the bare-sticks of the Roses of Sharon, alert, but not yet ready.
Early spring.  The daffs are fading and nodding, ready to hand over the glory to the lilacs.
Windows are cranked open, stretching and breaking the accumulated winter cobwebs.
The chimes can be heard now.  The birds can be appreciated. 
The soft breeze can diffuse the leftover smells of breakfast.
The long reaching roots of Lily of the Valley have pushed hither and yon;
the circle you so carefully planted last year around the ferns now looks like
a meeting place for an army of random greenlings.  They stand erect and furled in no particular pattern, but oh my how tall and straight they are – and how many!
The pond is still and begins to reflect the first blush of green on the trees.  The sky’s bright blue face is reflected on the surface, creating a blue and green rippling, liquid, tapestry.
There are so very many signs, and Spring has just begun gifting us with her riches.

Where is the "Happy"

Maybe I could be like that snake that she was talking about – the one that comes out to sun herself on the walk next to her house.  And then I could jump out of my skin, as I feel like doing tonight.

No, the day was not all bad, it never is all bad, but that in itself proves my statement last week in an email to a friend: happiness is temporary –Buddha said it, Cher said it in Moonstruck.  Happiness is temporary, fleeting.  I can feel contented one moment, but then….bingo. So what really is a state of “being Happy?”

Because, here’s how it works – you listen to some well-crafted lyrics and fine music in the car on the way to work – it’s your favorite folk singer – his voice is like gravel on velvet – and it makes you happy.  He’s familiar, he’s a friend, his words are wise and strong and weak and they come out of him like a well poured drink.  You’re happy too, with your thrown together outfit today; the pants are a good fit and not too tight to cause you discomfort by the afternoon after lunch, but fit well enough to show that your butt is not all that bad for your age.  The dotted socks in burgandy and gold, with the leopard shoes – well, they are silly enough to make you smile, and maybe keep your wacky fashion sense alive.  You feel at ease ready for the day.  Even the morning challenge of the meeting, the resolution with the newspaper reporter issue – really the photo was only phallic if it was on your mind….then mid-morning, a jaunt down to the dollar store. And walking back, almost bopping to the piped in music in the strip mall, with three bright red balloons;  only a few pain jolts in the hip – thank you lord.

And then the planned walk with the others in celebration of the county declared Healthy week; pied piper style, thru the streets of Kingston, with the red balloons bobbing along, though one did escape.  And then Eleanor, the one with the sunning snake at her home, displaying her fancifully carved fruit and veggies at the table on the sidewalk outside the office.  And some really good pictures of carved melons and clementine’s and cucumbers looking like flowers, or was that supposed to be a spider? 

And then………………the comment.  And I can’t write it, but how to explain that it changed the tenor of the day?  It made me feel bad.  It made me wonder what constitutes a sense of humor and when or if we need to comment.  It made me question myself, my immediate reaction, and my opinions.  And it took the “happy” out of the day.  That, and the ever rising anxiety and urgency permeating the office cubes, because of the pending meeting this evening.  And so I had to go to the wine store and I had to question “happy” all over again and why I would let someone take away my “happy”.   But doesn’t it prove the point that happiness is temporary, fleeting, which is what I wrote my friend in the email, that made her sad, as she told me in the return email.

Yes, we can waken in the morning being grateful for the day and the creaky old bones still able to jump up and forth into the day.  And we are ever so happy for our children’s health and both their recent good fortunes!  And we are grateful for a job and dear friends and a thoughtful lover and all that can be happy………..

But cannot a single phone call, an isolated comment, and awareness of another’s; hardship or tragedy or loss - does not that interfere with the “happy”? Of course it does!  What is the moral here?

Grab it while you feel it.  Happiness, by definition need to be fleeting, temporary.  We are mere mortals bumbling our way thru life as we know it.