Hissing on Easter and other Rambles
The 0815 service this morning was glorious. We got there early, because those who had gone to the early-early service and had stayed on for breakfast would be leaving, and this is Easter – we needed a parking place. The front of the church was laden with flowers, so many flowers it looked like a private garden, and the flowers scented the entire church, an odor of sanctity.
Getting there early was a really good thing – just after we entered, the brass trio started serenading us, exultant music, full of joy and triumph, perfect way to start an Easter morning service. It’s a special treat, having music and the full choir at the 0815 service, but a member of the choir told me earlier that this is the only Sunday of the year that they sing at all three services. If you like music, oh, what a treat!
The church filled up quickly. I couldn’t help it, I had to look around to see if there were any Easter bonnets. I remember being a kid – a girl kid, that is. We always had hats for Easter. Being kind of a snotty kid, I was often critical of the one I got and somewhere along the line that tradition was discontinued. I guess it must have been discontinued widely, as there were only six ladies wearing hats (we couldn’t help it, we counted), but very nice hats they were. The little girls were all dressed in lovely dresses, some even with chiffon and lots of ribbons.
As we reached the offering, people behind us were criticizing the parents whose children were making noise.
“They should know better! Why don’t they just take them out, so they won’t bother the rest of us?”
“It’s SO disrespectful!”
There is child care available, but I personally love having the children in the service. Maybe it’s a little disruptive, but you know – we’ll live. And I just thank God they are there! I want them to be welcome! I want the parents not to have to leave, but to know their children – and their antics – are welcome! I miss our noisy services in Doha and in Kuwait, with the babies, the children. Even though they left, there was always a little serendipitous bedlam in the service to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously.
As we left, we also sighed – we miss the gorgeous colorful displays of all the saris on the high holy days, the saffrons and fuschias and peacock blues and greens and golds.
Later this afternoon, when the Happy Baby wakes up from his nap, we’ll be having Easter Dinner. He got going too fast this morning and split his lip when he fell. I remember our son at that age, and the doctor who looked at me meaningfully and asked “does your son often have bruises?” I was so offended, but all I could do was laugh – when they start running, they fall down. Once, I was right there when he tripped – inches away from me – and fell against a sharp edged table. It all happened so fast there was nothing I could do (except take him to the emergency room for stitches).
Actually, we were at a school friend’s house in Jordan, his father owned the hospital, his driver drove us, he Dad-the-doctor put in the stitches and we were back at the party before ice-cream and cake were served.
We try to protect them. We do our best. We try to teach them how to behave at public gatherings, like parades, like church, like change-of-command ceremonies, things we are not born knowing. It takes practice. Like parenting. 🙂
Holy Week Evensong at Christ Church, Pensacola
My favorite service of all, Evensong. Everything is just moving along, peacefully, penitentially, as we enter Holy Week, when all of a sudden, the choir is singing Gounod, the Jerusalem anthem from Gallia. Oh, WOW! Gounod makes me grin, and he moves me. Gounod . . . Gounod ROCKS!
And here you can here the anthem:
I was introduced to Gounod in Doha. Our priest, Ian Young, led a group called the Doha Singers, and he chose challenging music. We learned Gounod’s Mass for St. Cecelia, and the music is the kind that gets into your blood. I couldn’t get enough of it. I never get sick of it. Gounod is music with a sense of drama and a sense of humor about itself. I think it is his sense of timing, how you hold a note just a little longer than you would expect, and then rollick on to the next. I had never heard this piece before, but Gounod is so individual, so unique – it had to be Gounod.
It was a perfect evening, a lovely service, and the sun shone in through the cross as it set:
At the end, we sang one of my very favorite hymns, The Day Thou Gavest Lord, is Ended:
I admit it, I am pretty tough, but these words make me weak and weepy:
The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.
All in all, a lovely day. Our son joined us for the first episode of The Game of Thrones on HBO. He’s read all the books, I am on book 2, and AdventureMan is reading the first book, the one on which this series is based. Great way to begin our week. 🙂
Why I Love My Daughter-in-Law
“Can I come by?” she asked on a Saturday morning. “I have something for you.”
“Now? Sure! I’ve been working outside and I’m just cleaning up a little in the kitchen. It’s a great time.”
Moments later she was there, empty-handed. We hugged, but she laughed when she saw my puzzled face and said “it’s outside by your back gate.”
We walked back together, and there it was, just what I wanted:
She bought me a compost-maker!
I’ve got diamonds. I’ve got pearls. I’ve got everything I need to decorate myself and my house, too much even. But what I don’t have – or I didn’t until now – was a compost maker. This girl knows how to thrill my heart.
We spent a few minutes reading the instructions and putting it together. Wooo HOOOOO!
Don’t you hate to waste? I’ve been throwing out carrot peelings, and onion skins, and salad mix that’s gone a little gooey in my refrigerator, my coffee grounds, my newspapers – they are all fodder for making good compost, and good compost is desperately needed when your yard is greatly sand. Wooo HOOOO! Now, I can make my own compost!
I totally love it.
I decided to cut back this year, not to try to grow so many tomatoes and so many peppers. I don’t know what happened, but I had ordered some seeds, and I couldn’t let them go to waste, and I bought a couple tomatoes that are supposed to do well in this area, and we still have many nights with temperatures lower than 70 degrees (F) so I can still hope to have good tomatoes before the great heat sets in for the summer. Some people tell me that if I can keep the tomatoes going through the summer, just green, not setting tomatoes, some of them will start setting tomatoes again once the weather starts cooling once again. I also learned that the time to start your seedlings in Florida is like January or February, to get good tomato crops before the heat starts, so I got started about a month too late. On the other hand, they are doing great. We shall see.
This is what ‘cutting back’ looks like:
I found the Black Krims at the 14th Annual Emerald Coast Garden Show at the PSC Campus in MIlton last weekend. Mr. B’s Tomatoes was right where I bought them last year, and it was my first stop. I also bought one he said would also produce well for me, called Tommy Toe. It’s a weird name. Tomato people often give their tomatoes weird names.
My roses are growing like crazy, unfortunately, a week before Easter. I wonder if I will have any left to give to the church for the Easter services?
I planted tulips and Iris in the fall; the tulips are coming up but I have yet to see a real tulip bloom. The irises look good – I am thinking they may do well here, and that is a really good thing because I love iris. (I pulled the weed)
Three of my tomato plants have tomatoes on them!
Happy Five Year Anniversary
“How did he sound?” AdventureMan asked about our son.
I smiled.
“Actually, he sounded fine. He sounded like there is nothing in the world he wants to do more than to stay home with his sick baby.”
Everything was planned. Our son and his wife were on their way out to a special dinner, to celebrate five years of successful marriage. We were signed on to babysit, something we do with gladness. We knew how the evening would go. We arrive, HappyBaby runs shrieking with joy to AdventureMan, running right around me if I get in the way. I fix dinner, feed the HappyBaby, AdventureMan takes him down to play, then bathtime, then bed.
Not this time.
Our son called us about an hour before we were scheduled to arrive.
‘It’s all off” he said. “HappyBaby is sick, fever, lethargic. We’re just going to stay home. You can come by if you just want to hang out.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry!” I said, a little in shock. HappyBaby has been having a long spell of wellness. “I’m making spaghetti for us and HappyBaby,” I replied, “but there’s a lot. Can I bring dinner?”
He said yes. We made a salad, AdventureMan found a really good bottle of wine, we headed down. AdventureMan held HappyBaby – not so happy, very tired and a little fussy – while we dished up; I finished and held him so AdventureMan could eat. HappyBaby was fine with coming to me, his arms went around me, his little head went down on my shoulder, and it was like when he was little little, except he is so big now that I can’t sit down, or I can’t easily get up again. He’s a big boy now.
I always joke that I am the grandmother who can bore her grandson to sleep. We stood outside for a while, watching the cars go by, watching the sun set over the Bayou, and when the cool breeze started blowing I took him inside. He was so sleepy, he didn’t complain. We rocked, and I put him down in his crib, fast asleep.
It wasn’t the evening we expected. It was, for us, even better, having a relaxed time with our son and his wife, getting to put HappyBaby to sleep once again. It turned out to be a very sweet evening.
We’ve signed up to do the babysitting again when HappyBaby is well and our son and his wife can go out for that dinner. Five years of marriage is worth celebrating. We are so proud of them and the way they handle life, it’s joys and disappointments, struggles, challenges and triumphs. They are a good team, and we celebrate that they found one another and work so well together.
The YaYas
I see them everywhere. Small groups of women, usually three or four, sitting in church together, heads together over lunch, power walking down the boulevard, at coffee after their tennis matches. You can see the intimacy, the trust – these are women who have grown together over time. They share their secrets. They prop each other up in the bad times. They laugh over their faux-pas.
No, I don’t envy them, nor do I want to become a part of their group. I know my own YaYas will build, and I will have women I love sharing my life here. Meanwhile, I miss my old YaYa’s.
I’ve been here a year now. The one year point, for me, is usually when things start happening. The real friends come along. I start committing and getting involved in my new community. When I think of all the details we have overcome in one year, all the anxieties I had, all the details over which I agonized, I thank God for his mercy and for the peace of mind we have now. Truly, he answered every prayer, and brought us to a good and spacious place.
Pensacola Visitors To Fort Pickens
You ask where I have been. We’ve just had two weeks and three weekends of house guests. Now, before you groan, I have to tell you that it was two different visits, with less than 24 hours in between, and both visits were old and dear friends. Our visitors are people we treasure and who are easy easy guests to have around. We’ve had two weeks of great visits and great conversations, and I apologize if you are feeling a little abandoned. I didn’t really abandon you; I checked the blog almost daily, but . . . I had a lot on my hands. I can only do a few things at a time, and do them well. I chose to focus on my guests. I hope you will forgive me. 🙂
So I am going to share with you some beautiful sights from nearby Fort Pickens. When we first went there, about a year ago, we discovered they have a Senior Lifetime Pass for only $20. There was only one Senior in the car at the time – me – so the pass is in my name, and gets us into every national park in the United States, me and up to eight people in the same car with me. How is that for a bargain? We’ve already used it four or five times worth the original payment of $20. What an amazing deal!
Fort Pickens is out along Pensacola Beach, and is a long narrow strip of land barely above sea-level. We could see it with our eyes, and when we measured it with our iPhones, it gave us a range from below sea level to 33 feet above sea level. (iPhones must be nearly out of fashion because all my friends have them and we are OLD! If we have them, there must be something out there newer and faster and better that all the trend-setting youngsters are buying . . . so what is it?)
Oops! I got distracted! What I want to do is share some photos of what a truly gorgeous place Fort Pickens is:
I think these are trilliiums:
Aren’t these pretty berries? I don’t know if they are edible – or poisonous!
Perfect weather for a walk, and this is the walking trail, .7 miles each direction:
Fort Pickens was constructed to protect the shores from invaders, so this is one of the fortress walls”
A Heron along the nature trail:
A Turtle (we can’t agree on whether it is a Gopher Turtle or a Snapping Turtle):
We finished up with a walk along the beach, where our visitors talked with the fishermen along the shore. These are the lines they have out trying to catch some fish, but I really want you to see how clean and beautiful the beach, sand and water are looking 🙂 :
This week, I need to get some things done in the garden, before the weather starts getting too hot!
Spring Break in Pensacola
Just sad:
Breaker’s car? This car has eyelashes attached above the headlights!
Like Cats
I was talking with a friend who had started in a new church about a year ago, around the same time we started at our church. I was telling her about the Service to Others Committee, and how I like everyone working on it, we were all kind of nerds, my favorite kind of people.
She looked a little down, and told me it seemed to be taking some time for her to find her niche in the church, and so I had to share with her my cat theory.
When you bring a new cat into a house where you already have a cat, you have to keep them separated for a while. You put the new cat in a separate room, with separate feeding dishes and litter box. Even so, the original cat is going to be a little wary. He can smell the new cat, it is something new and something strange, and it makes him uneasy.
People, it seems to me, are a little the same way, especially people who are settled. When a new person comes in, it just won’t do to try to be accepted. You just have to come in quietly, don’t intrude, let people get used to you. Little by little, people reach out to you. It can be discouragingly slow. If you have patience, it pays off.
Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, you meet someone with a widely accepting outlook, and this time, I was lucky, I met a friend at the church who is just so full of life she bubbles with it. She makes things happen. She doesn’t have time for gossip or negative thoughts, and if you are willing to help, that’s good enough for her. She is organized and she is busy, and I feel really lucky to be her friend.
Slowly, people are starting to realize we are not visitors at the church, but here to stay, and are reaching out to greet us. It’s a good feeling.
Tomorrow, we have our first of two sets of house guests arriving. When our first guest leaves, I have 18 hours to get the room and bathroom cleaned, clean sheets on the bed, etc. They are all really good friends, very old friends, and all coming to escape the chill of a seemingly endless winter and enjoy a little sunshine. If you don’t hear much from me, it’s because I’m out playing. 🙂
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