DOWN TIME

West Michigan -This time of winter it’s easy to think about Florida and a warm breeze. I know it sounds good but I still hang onto the frosty morning and snow crunching under my feet. I went for a walk in the woods today. The sun was just bumping up behind the trees and last week’s snow has a thick crust on top so I can walk without sinking to my knees. Blackbirds are all heading north again, breaking out of their mid winter swarms, looking for a mate. Spring peepers will be out as soon as the ground thaws. I’m in no rush. 

This winter has lacked luster but the down time has its own rewards. I’m not very motivated yet but I can hear the highway calling. I’ll make time for a nap this afternoon and then start checking air fares and road maps. 

SAY CHEESE

I have always liked snow, in the air and on the ground. Something about snow crunching under my feet and the way winter’s earthy hughes retreat under a pristine, white blanket that gives me peace. Snow that piles up on my sidewalk and driveway can be a nuisance but it’s a small price to pay. I’m lucky, my driveway slopes down to the street and I can push it down to the curb: then it’s a short throw into a heap, out of the way.  I usually have to go to Michigan to get my snow ration for the winter but Kansas City just got its first meaningful snow in several years. I’m getting too old or too lazy maybe; only cleaned off one side of the driveway and a narrow path from the stoop across the patio. 

A few years ago I got the idea of photographing trees throughout the year for a calendar. But snow was hard to find and at least one winter scene should have snow. There is a gorgeous tree that I have been admiring for years, up north of the river. It’s on a Seminary campus with easy access. I kept thinking it would make a great winter study but without snow, it’s just another naked tree. Then, on Thursday, we got more snow than we wanted. In the first hour it snowed 6” and then tapered off for the rest of the day. We got over a foot of snow on the ground and for all practical purposes, Kansas City shut down. 

Yesterday, Friday, I started working my way north. Side streets were still clogged but I made it to my morning, coffee group and then through the city, across the river. After parking in the Salvation Army’s lot, I had to walk in the street as the outside lane in both directions was only half clear and the berm along the curb was over waist deep. With camera safe inside its case, I rolled across the snow and struggled to get my feet under me. I knew it would be deep and I’ve bucked deep snow before but that was when I was still leaping tall buildings racing locomotives. 

There was a man with his little kids, sledding on the hillside between me and the handsome Sycamore. I finally got to the right spot, with good light and background; changed lens’s and took a few shots. The light was so bright, my eyes so constricted, I couldn’t see the image on the screen. The man and his kids had moved out of the way and I moved down hill to a spot I thought would offer the best view. More photographs; all I could think of was the disappointment I would feel if I didn’t get at least one terrific shot. The long drive and bucking snow, struggling up hill in waist deep stuff; it was incumbent on me to just keep taking shots, all angles, near and far. Getting back to the car wasn’t any easier but it was down hill. I was covered with snow and inside the car it began to melt. 

I dried out in a local grocery store and had to hurry back across town to make an appointment at the Apple Computer Store. I down loaded from camera to computer, culled through nearly a hundred photos and kept nine. One of the nine will have to be good enough. I don’t know when I’ll get another chance like that. 

Blood's Thicker Than Water

After about three weeks, anywhere, I start thinking about the road. It’s been three weeks and as much as my house needs me and my stuff needs order, I find myself checking maps and destinations and interesting ways of getting from here to there. I’m in the middle of a project in the wood shop and have an adventure planned with my granddaughters for week after next so I can’t just drop everything and run off. But my wheels are turning and it will happen. 

Today took the edge off my wanderlust, at least for a while. I have two nieces by my little brother; one lives about an hour’s drive away, but whom I seldom get to see. The other used to live in Florida but followed her heart to South Korea and I haven’t seen her for a while either. Today, they were hanging out together and I got to join them. Terry is the taller, world traveler while little sister Julie just appears to be short. Nobody in my family can tease any other about a vertical challenge. My mother used to say, “It doesn’t matter how tall you are as long as your feet reach the ground.” Not that it bothered us but there is a logic buried there that is hard to resist. 

Isn’t it great when relatives turn out to be more interesting and appealing than newly coined strangers? That’s what we rediscovered, again today. Time flew by and before you could shake a stick: that’s another of my mother’s famous quotes, it was time for me to leave. But I’m going back tomorrow and we’ll laugh some more and be so happy that we have each other. There will be plenty of time to juggle maps and itineraries for a yet to be planned road trip. 

IF I COULD FLY

Sitting in a coffee house is nothing new for me. Today I’m at CC’s, on Coursey Blvd., in Baton Rouge. It’s rained more here in the last two weeks than it rained all of September in Halifax; and they set a record then. It’s really flat here, almost no gradient so with nowhere to go, the streams and bayous just fill up and run over. But I got to spend some time on the beach, over on the Florida/Alabama coast. Cloudy or not, a warm day on the beach is better than any rainy day in a coffee shop. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s a thousand black birds, rising up in close formation over a grain field or a lone pelican, riding an updraft like a surfer on an endless wave; they all get my attention. I’ve loved birds and wings for as long as I can remember. They’re all special but the ones that left me open mouthed and wide eyed were the ones that soar. They find columns of up-rushing air and hover there like an acrobats, hand standing on top of a flag pole. Most times, they are either too high or far away to see much. But on the beach they are feeding and it brings them down, suspended over the shallows, maybe just a few yards away and low enough to see feathers spread like fingers, flutter in the wind. 

It was windy; gulls would find a good spot and hang suspended there for a while, then float off to one side, turn back into the wind and take off like a kite. The sweet spot wouldn’t stay vacant for long: like a game of musical chairs, they took turns there. I watched a gull arc up in a climbing loop and streak away. Looking back to see who would take its place, I was amazed to see a big, heavy bodied bird; too big to be a gull. No mystery, just a surprise: pelicans are unmistakable. This one did a little fan dance there that stretched from 10 to 20, to 30 seconds; enough time for me to hatch the idea, reach around for my camera and check its settings, take time to steady myself and frame the image. Shutter-click and pelican rotated its wings just enough to act like sails and rebound up and away as if on a long stretched rubber band. Saints have visions, Prophets have revelations and Moses had his burning bush. I have close encounters with birds; wouldn’t want it any other way. 

SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE . . .

Nine stories up, looking out over the balcony at Alabama’s sandy shore and the warm Gulf, lapping up on the beach. It’s New Year’s Eve with about six hours left to celebrate its passing. The plan is to wander Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, listen to music, sip a little vino and not eat too much. 

Funny how we single out today and tomorrow for the sole purpose of wrapping up one story and beginning again, fresh and new. I find myself celebrating the end of every day, even when I get bad news or break things. They are milestones that, at my age, take on more and more significance. The wake-up is equally sweet, with bed-head and stiff joints I smile at myself in the mirror. We get to play this game another day. But 2012 has been a remarkable year. Besides multiple road trips to Dallas, New Orleans/Baton Rouge, Chicago, Michigan and Ohio, I spent three months in Nova Scotia: swam a couple of hundred miles and lost twenty pounds. My doctors are all happy with my numbers, my friends still talk to me and every day is full of Story & Music. My children and grandchildren are well and I have a delightful new daughter (Pete & Betsy married on 12/21). So for tonight: Here’s a hand my trusty friend, give back a hand of thine, we’ll raise our spirits and the cup, for days of auld lang syne.

TICK TOCK

Waking up this morning, can’t be sure if it was a dream or low level consciousness. Maybe it started out one and stretched into the other but I was aware enough to wonder what time it was. The mantle clock began it’s hourly report as if it knew I was listening. Seven chimes and I knew, it was a good time to get up. 

I got the clock nine years ago, at an antique shop in Ludington, Michigan. It was  over a hundred years old, in great shape and everything worked. When I got it home I discovered that it only worked for a day or two, then stopped. After some searching I discovered “Bryant’s Clock Restoration”. John Bryant is a relatively young man in a traditionally, old man’s trade. He restores old, “Tick-Tock” clocks. He’s old enough to have experience and young enough you would think he’ll be around another twenty years. His shop is in Kansas City's north end. It used to be known as “Little Italy” but Columbus Circle is now home to Asian and Haitian families as well. The place screams of ethnicity but the faces and the architecture just don’t seem to go together. 

I took my new, antique, intermittently working clock to John. He told me he had a six month back log and then treated me to a short course on clock repair. With old clocks, cheap short cuts yield temporary results and then you have the same dilemma all over again. So I left my clock with him. Just over six months and $400 later, I got my clock back. All of the shafts were nested in new, oversized bushings; in newly drilled holes, with new springs and rebalanced gears. I’ve got it tweaked so it only needs a reset about every other week; and then only a few minutes. 

So, 7:00 and I’m up for the day. But I’m far, far away from any bed that I would normally sleep in. My clock and I are in Dayton, Ohio to celebrate the wedding of my son Pete and his delightful, darling Betsy. The clock has been with me long enough that I can bear to let it go. I want to give them something that suggests a tangible and enduring legacy. My mantle clock is the best I can do. 

We take time for granted, but it’s a human construct. Everything about us, all of our experiences are qualified within that framework. Was it last year, or has it only been ten minutes? How long can I hold my breath? When will you call? Time! Somehow, the ticking clock gives measure to experience and centers us in the moment. In fact, time is nothing more nor less than a way to order experience. We are stuck in the present, able to remember and to anticipate but only able to act in the moment.  

The clock is real, with a practical purpose and a story of its own. Whose home moved to its rhythm a hundred years ago? Who woke up to its chime? The hand that turned the key, wound the spring; we are without a clue but that doesn’t alter its story. At most, it’s just not for us to know. For the past nine years, this striking mantle clock has been on my dresser, reassuring me in the middle of the night and reminding me from the other end of the house. Life is moving on, with memories in its wake and a thin veneer of possibility for its future. We will celebrate a wedding this evening; in another seven hours or so. 

POW WOW

I’m not a “Tribal” kind of guy but when the whole clan is present at the same table, it’s time to Pow Wow. Sarah, in from Soldotna, Alaska; Pete & Betsy in from Dayton, Ohio and we celebrated Sarah’s birthday a couple of days early, just because we could. Jon & Jay, with their families, their mother and myself; we ate too much, played with grandchildren, told lies, tall tales, and tried to not miss a thing.

“Bedlam” is defined as, the condition of wild uproar and confusion. I remember all too well, in the 70’s & 80‘s the six of us at the same table and it was bedlam. But now they hang on each other’s words and laugh at when they made each other cry. Grandkids are well, and doing well. We must have done something right. About kids, Gibran said, “. . . you can house their bodies but not their souls. Their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow and we can’t go there; not even in our dreams.” But I get to peak in the window, the house of tomorrow, the tomorrow after that and they look like good places to be. If I was still faster than a speeding bullet and leaping tall buildings in a single bound, this growing old thing wouldn’t be bad at all. But I’ve slowed down some and my best days are watching my kids and grandkids reinvent the world.

Pete & Betsy are actually getting married next week, 12/21/12, in Dayton, OH. These two have been working on this for almost three years; trying to get their jobs in the same town and only one house between them. Looking good; I’ll be there. 

L to R - Front {Jon & Stacy's Little girls.} Cecilia, 6 and Mahala, 8 

Big girls - Stacy, Betsy, Sarah, {J.D.’s - Alexa, 12} & Granny Odis

Back row - Pete, {J.D.’s - Bailey, 16}  Jon, J.D., and me, the Poohbah.