A Painful Reminder

Reading a little bit today about the aftermath of Katrina and seeing pictures of helpless people, most now homeless, battling their way through chest-high waters, I was struck by how last week all these people were going about their daily lives, worrying about the daily trivial things and then today, a week later, some of them have lost loved ones, some of them have loved ones missing and so many of them have nothing left. Houses gone, cars gone, friends gone. In a moment's time, it seems, all of life can be changed. And what once seemed imminently important---appointments, schedules, to-do lists---now mean nothing in the face of total loss. It's all about perspective. We forget that we're just one breath from eternity. We forget that there is no guarantee of tomorrow, of next week, of another year. And yet sometimes we can bluster through life and not see any of the magic of it. We race from one task to the next, grumble about the state of things, fret about the bills, agonize about things that we either can't change this minute or we can't change at all. And we forget to LIVE. We forget to look around. We forget to be kind. We forget to be thankful. We lose our perspective and it takes a Katrina to make us remember. It was a harder knock on the door for those in the South than it was for us here on this side of the country; no question about that. But it gave us notice, even so.

Young Was Not So Long Ago

Kids never seem to conceive, while they live under your roof, that you were once 15 as well. They don't know that it isn't so hard to remember the feelings, the yearnings, how the soul even ached with feelings you couldn't describe. Those feelings, they flitted and flashed, sometimes easy to capture, other times impossible. Kids don't believe that their parents were ever anything except the obstacles between them and what they really want. I'm only ever the maid and the busdriver and the cook, I suppose. Inconceivable that I was young and flirty and silly and fun; that I had dreams and ambitions and goals; that I had emotions that were bigger than I was; that I swam in flashfloods of desire. They look askance and roll their eyes at the idea that we, their parents, ever liked anything "cool". We're just these antiques who try to keep them from having fun, looking cool, being with their friends, listening to good music.....

Which makes me wonder.....have I ever said thank you to my parents? Thanks for sacrificing their time and their money and their energy....when there were things they would've rather done and they did for me instead. Have I ever said thanks and even sorry? Sorry that I was such a clueless git sometimes, selfish and self-centered and self-absorbed. Thanks for the times they rescued me; sorry for the times I didn't say thanks....Have I ever mentioned those things? Have I ever really sat down and thought about my parents as anything other than the handyman, the maid, the cook, the driver? To a degree I have, but maybe not enough. Maybe now's as good a time as any just to say thanks.

Move over, Tubby

One of the things I like to ponder now and then is how many homes around the world have pictures of each one of us in them. Perfectly strange (and not-so-strange) strangers have pictures of you and me sitting in their photo albums, in frames, used as bookmarks, etc. There we are, in the background, or standing left of center, and our mug shares the limelight with whomever or whatever was being filmed. Hopefully we're not doing anything embarrassing or incriminating that we'll be known for in their circles forever.

One of those strange people appeared recently in a LOT of our vacation photos. There were some great shots taken at Mammoth Lakes (a beautiful spot of earth), Tijuana, Disneyland...but this really blobby, overweight person kept being in them! Every couple of shots, there she was! What a porker. I didn't point this out to anyone because I didn't want to draw attention to something so shallow. I don't want my kids to think that such a thing is so important, but really---this woman needed to go on a diet, like yesterday. She was frumpy and lumpy and kind of bumpy. Yuck. And now she's in all these vacation photos we have and we can't exactly cut her out of all of them----oh wait! Is that ME??

Gross. Never mind. Forget I said anything.

Derring-do

Derring-do---meaning great courage, of course---came about as the result of a misprint. Chaucer first penned "dorring don" meaning 'daring to do' something, and it was later misprinted as "derrynge do" and everyone took this spelling as a new compound noun meaning 'manly courage'. Alrighty then. Subsequent writers then spread the mistake far and wide, and "derring-do" became a staple of adventures. That's all well and good, but it's a little annoying when dumbness becomes mainstream. I only don't mind it when I'm the one being dumb. In any case, it's certainly a fact that being alive and living day-to-day in this crazy world, going from one madcap adventure to the next, requires much courage. Or derring-do, if you will. A double portion to all.