participation

I’m a sucker for Vows, the couple the NY Times features in its wedding announcements. The course of true love runs smooth or it runs into obstacles, but the couple overcomes and joins together in a great and joyful wedding. The happily ever after possibility gets me every time. Which brings me to something in the travel section this Sunday….an article about Japan, about how it’s doing since the tsunami, which was a year ago. Resilience, self possession, and community mindedness are what the writer sees in its comeback after such a blow from nature. You need those for a marriage, too, I’m thinking. And these two ideas, which the writer says the Japanese are able to hold at the same time: Happy moments in life cannot erase losses; nor can losses ever keep one from knowing happiness. I quote: “To see that life means a joyful participation in a world of sorrow, and that suffering is not the same as unhappiness is one of the singular blessings this seasoned country still has to offer.” Maybe that’s why I like to read about vibrant weddings and love overcoming all….

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rich

Sometimes I have unusually rich days. Sunday was one of them. Slept late. Someone else made breakfast. Cold, cold outside. Gray. Stayed in my pajamas and read the NY Times almost cover to cover. Thought on and off about the new love in my life, my 6-week-old grandson. Talked on the phone with various people I love, and whom I haven’t been seeing (I’m hunkered down finishing revisions on a 4th novel). Ate a secret stash of chocolate-covered graham crackers, while I  read the Times. The intelligence and scope of its writing give me instant civics lessons, ideas to chew on, opinions to mull. Made a fire. Love watching the flames kindle, tending them so they’ll grow. Went to a women’s ceremony celebrating St. Brigid. We were asked to think of the women or woman who inspired us. Then we said the names after a time of thoughtful silence, offering them up to the gods that be in Houston’s stark and beautiful Friends Meeting House, the names rising like doves. Then to the post office to mail a late bill. One ought to go to the post office late. Interesting folk show up. An East Indian couple were working together to mail a package on the automatic postal machine, talking softly in their language. Then an elderly couple showed up and puttered with their mail, talking about their life and the state of the union. Then an ancient bent-over gentleman in a big Stetson and cane tottered over to the postal machine. I thought he was impatient that the couple took so long. He announced to the post office at large the way old people will that he wanted to pay for his p. o. box and he wasn’t sure he could do that, and in perfect English, the man of the East Indian couple worked the machine and found the button that would let him do what he needed. In a courtly, Texan way, he said, thank you so very much. I’m glad you were here. I thought about Houston and its immense diversity, and how I was witnessing that, and how folks underestimate our city, only the fourth largest and too hot but wonderful in so many ways.

Question: Who are the women who inspired you? My answer: Lillian Hellman and Lily Jones. Details next blog.