"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US"

 

Dwarf Red Maple and Snap Dragons

I started writing this post last week, seated outdoors with time to think. Having just finished my peruse of The Guardian, half my mind was on Donald Trump, who facing 80 and dementia, posted an AI picture of himself as Jesus Christ.  Inanity and blasphemy. Like all of us when "[t]he world is too much with us," to quote William Wordsworth (1770-1850), I needed to transition back to the moment.    

How better than to share the beauty of the courtyard where I was sitting, the dwarf red maple newly blooming with last year's snap dragons reseeded?  My daughter-in-law had said that morning that we must pace our attention to the state of our country. So I worked in the yard, watering the moss because we are in a drought; pruning the dead branches from the hydrangea, which always bloom on our anniversary, early June; and best of all--swam. (Yes, it reached 81℉ that day where we live in North Carolina.)

Last year's fulsome bounty!

We live in an old mid-century modern house with a small concrete pool.  Great for my bad back.  I can slide in and reach the other side in eight strokes.  A luxury I never dreamed of until we found this abandoned property over 20 years ago.  After a lap, I raised my head to a small field mouse, paddling in desperation.  I put a float under it and out it scampered, into the grasses.  Whew!  

So a small but, to me, luxurious day.  I always feel like I may not deserve this old house in the woods with mice and a pool.  I may not deserve a long marriage and retirement.  I may not deserve the free-time to sit and blog.  Do you ever feel like you don't deserve your good things?

Now, this week, we are back at our friends' house in Santa Barbara, California; the third year they have invited us to house-sit while they're gone, leaving our sweet old home to the field mice, squirrels and deer and my indoor plants to my gracious daughter-in-law. Here the purple jacaranda are in bloom.  I feel lucky again. 

How do you feel about your life?  I hope you mostly--if not entirely--love it.  Are content with it.  Wouldn't want to trade with anyone else at all.  Most of us say that, I've read. We may need more security and better health, but our life is ours. We won't give it away. 

No matter how we feel, here are my suggestions for spring, the suggestions of someone who has lived long:  Stick with the outdoors, stick with nature.  Wordsworth's poem continues, 

"late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" 

Backing away from the news from time to time keeps our hearts intact. Loving nature helps us love our lives, doesn't it?  I plant a few pansies and when the heat takes them, choose impatiens, begonias and geraniums.  Here at my friend's I am planting her thyme, basil, mint and oregano. My own has come up fresh and fragrant.

While here, I enjoy the orange and lemon trees, the amazingly fuchsia bougainvillea and the sight of the cold Pacific Ocean.  This is unusual for me.  Many people live in vacation spots or cities and towns known for their charm.  Not exactly true of Durham, North Carolina, a blue-collar town we do not intend to leave. 

So, there is no moral to this story.  Trump and his cruelty continue but so do our lives and loves.  So does God's creation.  So do our daily needs and resets.  So does the means of our salvation, our relationship with our God, with our families, with the life and water outside our door. 

Somehow after writing, this feels to me a bit like a prayer.  

AMEN

Nina Naomi  

 

  

 

 

 

 

  

A SPRING MOMENT--LASTING LOVE

 

 My Midwinter Moments are over for the year, the last one posted on January 22.  It's time for Spring Moments.  Of course, the first isn't a moment at all; it's a way of life.  Today, the day I am writing, is two weeks after Easter.   Like many, we had a our typical Resurrection Sunday:  church and Easter Breakfast.  We sat with friends in the Fellowship Hall and gorged on eggs, pancakes, sausage and fruit.  Very Lutheran.  

This year we had no family for brunch or supper.  We were alone together, our favorite way to be.  We have committed to de-cluttering this spring.  We are beginning with old love letters, the handwritten kind, written when we were very young and before email or cell phones.  It is the first time we have ever re-read these longing, romantic missives sent between college students living states apart.  

For three years we each wrote almost a letter a day.  Having met in junior high and dated in high school, in college we were growing into adults together, sharing our academic pursuits (both English majors) and amazing feelings of overwhelming love.  Not puppy love, or first love, but what was to become lasting love; love that would weather all storms, even great losses.  But of course, when we wrote these letters, we knew nothing of adversity.  We knew not that we were setting a strong foundation that would build trust of one another we couldn't, and didn't want to, break.  

I am going through the boxes and reading the yellowing letters aloud to my husband, bits and pieces, as he gives intermittent attention to a project on his computer.  We run across adventures we barely remember. Each letter is full of feeling.  

"1 a.m. Monday morning.  Back in the dormitory again!  It seems I just left.  You were in my thoughts all the way from St. Louis to Fort Wayne, as I dreamed many beautiful stories about us which will all come true. . . . You are all the brightness in my life; you are my life.  Without you, there would be nothing.  I love you with all my being, with all the strength that I have, and never, as long as I live, will I cease loving you."

I think we were 19 and 20 when this was written.  We have grandchildren those ages now.   Can we look to the future from a letter like that?  Do such feelings make an unbreakable bond for a marriage?  Or might someone feel that way at 20 or 30 and squander it all for a secret relationship at 40?  Or even 70?    

I tend to think that the early longing we endured built, in me at least, expectation and assurance of lasting fidelity.  I believed that early letter and responded in kind. The slightest deviation from that kind of love, for me, would not stand. My husband, I hope, the same.  

I have stacks of letter yet to go through.  Then we will save some and discard most.  I want to save the one I quoted.  How sweet is that, from a 20-year-old to the girl he loved?  I am lucky to be that girl, that woman.  We are both lucky.  Reading these for the first time in decades is a Spring Moment for us.  

With happiness, Nina Naomi