October 18-21: Doing Good, New Job, Abiding Love

 Thomas Merton becomes disenchanted with Communism . . .

My active part in the world revolution was not very momentous. It lasted, in all, about three months. I picketed the Casa Italiana, I went to the Peace Strike, and I think I made some kind of a speech in the big classroom on the second floor of the Business School, where the N.S.L. had their meetings. Maybe it was a speech on Communism in England—a topic about which I knew absolutely nothing; in that case, I was loyally living up to the tradition of Red oratory. I sold some pamphlets and magazines. I don’t know what was in them, but I could gather their contents from the big black cartoons of capitalists drinking the blood of workers. 

Finally, the Reds had a party. And, of all places, in a Park Avenue apartment. This irony was the only amusing thing about it. And after all it was not so ironical. It was the home of some Barnard girl who belonged to the Young Communist League and her parents had gone away for the weekend. I could get a fair picture of them from the way the furniture looked, and from the volumes of Nietszche and Schopenhauer and Oscar Wilde and Ibsen that filled the bookcases. And there was a big grand piano on which someone played Beethoven while the Reds sat around on the floor. Later we had a sort of Boy Scout campfire group in the living room, singing heavy Communist songs, including that delicate anti-religious classic, “There’ll be pie in the sky when you die.”

One little fellow with buck teeth and horn-rimmed glasses pointed to two windows in a corner of one of the rooms. They commanded a whole sweep of Park Avenue in one direction and the cross-town street in another. “What a place for a machine-gun nest,” he observed. The statement came from a middle-class adolescent. It was made in a Park Avenue apartment. He had evidently never even seen a machine-gun, except in the movies. If there had been a revolution going on at the time, he would have probably been among the first to get his head knocked off by the revolutionists. And in any case he, like all the rest of us, had just finished making the famous Oxford Pledge that he would not fight in any war whatever... 

One reason why I found the party so dull was that nobody was very enthusiastic about getting something to drink except me. Finally one of the girls encouraged me, in a businesslike sort of a way, to go out and buy bottles of rye at a liquor store around the corner on Third Avenue, and when I had drunk some of the contents she invited me into a room and signed me up as a member of the Young Communist League. I took the party name of Frank Swift. When I looked up from the paper the girl had vanished like a not too inspiring dream, and I went home on the Long Island Railroad with the secret of a name which I have been too ashamed to reveal to anyone until this moment when I am beyond humiliation. 

I only went to one meeting of the Young Communist League, in the apartment of one of the students. It was a long discussion as to why Comrade So-and-so did not come to any of the meetings. The answer was that his father was too bourgeois to allow it. So after that, I walked out into the empty street, and let the meeting end however it would. 

It was good to be in the fresh air. My footsteps rang out on the dark stones. At the end of the street, the pale amber light of a bar-room beckoned lovingly to me from under the steel girders of the elevated. The place was empty. I got a glass of beer and lit a cigarette and tasted the first sweet moment of silence and relief. 

And that was the end of my days as a great revolutionary. I decided that it would be wiser if I just remained a “fellow-traveller.” The truth is that my inspiration to do something for the good of mankind had been pretty feeble and abstract from the start. I was still interested in doing good for only one person in the world—myself.

Merton is young.  He has some kind of urge to make the world a better place for humankind, but he lacks the skills to do it at the moment.  He's too focused on his own needs and wants to worry about anyone else's.  That's pretty typical for a teenager.  A teenager doesn't see the big picture.  It's too hard to have a broader vision when all you're focused on is your own pain and awkwardness.

I have been preoccupied these last few days myself.  I started my new job two days ago, you see.  I am now the Adult Programming Coordinator for Peter White Public Library in Marquette, Michigan.  That means that I get to sit in an office most days, dreaming up events and readings and concerts and performances.  For instance, today I worked on a program for December that involves a virtual reader's theater of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  I spent over an hour just hunting down a good script to use.  And I got paid to do it.

This is sort of a dream job for me--earning money for creating and promoting art.  While, at the moment, I feel a little overwhelmed, I am slowly but surely finding my footing.  For a half hour this afternoon, I caught up with a friend of mine I haven't spoken with in a long time.  We directed and acted in musicals together way back.  I'm trying to involve her in one of my dream projects.  It was a wonderful half hour or so of catching up.  And tomorrow, I get to work at home, sitting at my kitchen table with my laptop, e-mailing and dreaming some more.

In a year that has been marked only by struggle in so many areas of my life (personal, political, parental, professional), these last few days at the library have been quiet and productive and thrilling.  Yet, there are still struggles present.  My son's constant battle with going to school.  My daughter's recent heartbreak and confusion.  My daughter's boyfriend of four years, and his heartbreak and despair.  I just want the world, and everyone I love in it, to be safe and happy.  

So, tonight, I pray for my son--that he will find his excitement for learning again.  I pray for my daughter--that she will know love and peace once more.  I pray for my daughter's boyfriend of four years--that he will realize that he is still loved and that his happiness is inside of himself. 

All of these miracles are about abiding love in some way, and Saint Marty's greatest faith is in the power of love.

October 15-17: Noisy and Shallow and Violent People, Change, Closed Doors

 Merton on chaotic political ideals . . . 

As far as I can remember, it seems that what most of us thought we were doing, when we took that pledge, was simply making a public-statement, and doing so in sufficient numbers, as we hoped, to influence politicians.  There was no intention of binding ourselves under any obligation. The notion never even occurred to us. Most of us probably secretly thought we were gods anyway, and therefore the only law we had to obey was our own ineffable little wills. It was sufficient to say that we did not intend to go to war for anybody: and that was enough. And if, afterwards, we changed our minds—well, were we not our own gods? 

It’s a nice, complex universe, the Communist universe: it gravitates towards stability and harmony and peace and order on the poles of an opportunism that is completely irresponsible and erratic. Its only law is, it will do whatever seems to be profitable to itself at the moment. However, that seems to have become the rule of all modern political parties. I have nothing to say about it. I do not profess to be either amazed or brokenhearted that such a thing should be possible. Let the dead bury their dead: they have certainly got enough to bury. It is the fruit of their philosophy that they should: and that is all that they need to be reminded of. But you cannot make them believe it. 

I had formed a kind of an ideal picture of Communism in my mind, and now I found that the reality was a disappointment. I suppose my daydreams were theirs also. But neither dream is true. 

I had thought that Communists were calm, strong, definite people, with very clear ideas as to what was wrong with everything. Men who knew the solution, and were ready to pay any price to apply the remedy. And their remedy was simple and just and clean, and it would definitely solve all the problems of society, and make men happy, and bring the world peace. 

It turned out that some of them indeed were calm, and strong, and had a kind of peace of mind that came from definite convictions and from a real devotion to their cause, out of motives of a kind of vague natural charity and sense of justice. But the trouble with their convictions was that they were mostly strange, stubborn prejudices, hammered into their minds by the incantation of statistics, and without any solid intellectual foundation. And having decided that God is an invention of the ruling classes, and having excluded Him, and all moral order with Him, they were trying to establish some kind of a moral system by abolishing all morality in its very source. Indeed, the very word morality was something repugnant to them. They wanted to make everything right, and they denied all the criteria given us for distinguishing between right and wrong.

And so it is an indication of the intellectual instability of Communism, and the weakness of its philosophical foundations, that most Communists are, in actual fact, noisy and shallow and violent people, torn to pieces by petty jealousies and factional hatreds and envies and strife. They shout and show off and generally give the impression that they cordially detest one another even when they are supposed to belong to the same sect. And as for the inter-sectional hatred prevailing between all the different branches of radicalism, it is far bitterer and more virulent than the more or less sweeping and abstract hatred of the big general enemy, capitalism. All this is something of a clue to such things as the wholesale executions of Communists who have moved their chairs to too prominent a position in the ante-chamber of Utopia which the Soviet Union is supposed to be.

Noisy and shallow and violent people, torn to pieces by petty jealousies and factional hatreds and envies and strife.  Thomas Merton might have been writing about Communists, but he is pretty much describing the current state of politics in the United States at the moment.  Constant readers of this blog pretty much know what side of the political spectrum I fall on.  (For occasional readers, or passersby, I will say this:  Donald Trump is to the United States of America what fracking is to the environment.  Blight and ruin.) 

The history of these last three years in my country has been violent and destructive.  I am not a fan of the two-party political system.  However, as the Republican Party of the United States has lost itself in one person's warped ego, I find myself becoming incredibly intolerant of Trump supporters.  Which is ironic, since Donald Trump is pretty much the poster child for intolerance.  I have become what I hate most about the current resident of the Oval Office.

I crave change on the national level.  I don't want to see my country, for which my father served in the armed forces, face another four years of institutionalized hatred and stupidity.  I want to see something shift, move, realign, reset.  If I could, I would press the restart button and reboot the entire world to its pre-2016 settings.

Instead, I find myself wanting change.  Needing change.  Of course, that's pretty much what 2020 has been about.  A global pandemic has a way of reshaping even the simplest of daily tasks.  Going out to the grocery store for a gallon of milk has become a military exercise in preparation.  Do I really need this milk right now?  Do I have my facemask?  Is there enough hand sanitizer in the car?  How crowded is the parking lot?  Can I avoid people wearing masks around their chins like feedbags?  Can I get in and out of the store with a minimum of social interaction?  

This year has also been a time of personal struggle and change for me, as well.  Relationship-wise and career-wise and parenting-wise.  Nothing has been easy these past 290 days, and I have had to face some difficult decisions.  This past Friday, I bid farewell to a healthcare career of over 25 years.  On Monday, I begin a whole new chapter of my professional life--one that I chose and am excited about.

In this same week, I celebrated my silver wedding anniversary, and my 19-year-old daughter fell into a state of unrest and upheaval in her personal life.  (Hers is not my story to tell, so I won't go into detail.)  My son continues to stretch my parenting skills to the breaking point, and Covid-19 cases in my little portion of the Upper Peninsula are sky-rocketing.  An ER nurse friend is working 15- and 16-hour shifts daily.

Not all change is bad.  I know this.  In fact, the badness or goodness of any change is an incredibly subjective thing.  I welcome my career change.  My new job as the adult programming coordinator for a local library will allow me to be creative and artistic in ways that I've always dreamed of.  And I'm getting paid to do it.  On the other hand, I wake every weekday morning with a knot in my stomach, wondering what kind of day my son will hand me.  Will he go to school?  Will he reduce me to sputtering anger?  I miss the son who went to school willingly, loved being with his friends and learning, didn't see the world darkly.

Doors close in life.  Sometimes those doors remain ajar.  Sometime, they are locked and bolted forever.  Either way, you are standing on the opposite side, in a room that may not be very familiar to you at all.  That's where I am right now.  In a house with an unfamiliar floorplan.  

But my foundation hasn't changed.  I still hate Donald Trump.  Love my children and wife.  Enjoy good poems and a glass of wine.  Cherish my friends.  Dream of a kinder, gentler new year.

For the miracle of open and closed doors, Saint Marty gives thanks.

May 23: Mad Beams, Existential, Mistakes

All right then.  Pull yourself together.  Is this where I'm spending my life, in the "reptile brain," this lamp at the top of the spine like a lighthouse flipping mad beams indiscriminately into the darkness, into the furred thoraxes of moths, onto the backs of leaping fishes and the wrecks of schooners?  Come up a level; surface.

Dillard is giving herself a little pep talk, trying to talk herself back from her "reptile brain."  There's something crazed, wild in her current state.  She's dwelling with insect and fish, diving into the wreck, as Adrienne Rich would say.  She wants to pull away, kick her way to air, to sky.  To the stars.

I've been feeling a little existential these last couple days.  Questioning the meaning of my life.  Like Dillard, it's not a state in which I want to remain very long.  I would prefer to surface right now, but I can't.  Instead, I'm dwelling on the choices I've made.  Over and over.

I wake up in the morning and think, "What the hell am I doing?"  I didn't dream of being a clinic office clerk when I was a kid.  When I'm sitting at my desk for eight hours, registering patients and answering phones, I sometimes want to get up, walk away, find a quiet corner, and read a book or write a poem.  And when I'm in a classroom teaching, I feel like I'm . . . home (sorry if that sounds corny, but that's the only way I can say it).

Of course, I know I've made mistakes.  Every day, I make mistakes.  Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be working for a little while at my new job, registering patients for about an hour.  I have no clue what I'm doing.  I'm going to need help.  A lot of help.  And I'm going to make mistakes.  A lot of them.  (I'm not entirely sure that this new job is the right choice for me.  It may be another mistake.)

Being human means being flawed.  I'm a jigsaw puzzle of failures.  So is everybody else.  One of the hardest things as a parent is seeing your kids make bad choices and not being able to do a thing to stop them.  Yet, I've learned more from my mistakes than my successes.  That's the irony.  My mistakes have made me a better person.

So, here I sit on my couch at home, in the dark, feeling existential while watching Antiques Roadshow.  I don't know what the meaning of my life is.  I am a husband.  A father.  Teacher, writer, blogger.  And I have failed (sometimes miserably) in each of those roles at one point or another.

Marty is probably failing at being a saint, as well.  He hasn't performed any miracles in a really long time.

May 15: First Communion, Eloise, Classic Saint Marty

My son is the one with the Mohawk

It was a good ending to a stressful weekend.  In case you are interested, my bathroom is open for business after several hundred dollars.  No collapsed sewer lines.  No invasive tree roots.  No backhoes digging up my front yard.  When I flushed my toilet this morning, I did not hear gurgling in the bathtub drain.  Answered prayer.

Today was eventful.  My son made his First Communion this afternoon.  He did really well.  Remembered where to stand, when to bow.  He was able to stand still, keep his hands to himself.  Didn't drop the Communion wafer or spit out his mouthful of wine.  He even made it through Father Larry's sermon without throwing himself on the floor and saying, "How much longer?"  More answered prayer.

And tonight, we are celebrating my sister's birthday.  She is 51 years old today.  When my sister was born, the doctor told my mother to put her in a sanatorium and forget about her.  Up until 1984, there was a large asylum/mental hospital named Eloise operating outside of Detroit.  At the time my sister was born, it wasn't uncommon for people to simply drop family members who suffered from mental illness off at this facility (which was more like a self-contained city) and never return for them.  That could have been my sister, had my parents followed the doctor's advice.  They didn't.  My sister is a functioning and happy person.  Answered prayer.

I am surrounded by blessings.  In a little while, I will be starting a new job.  Two years ago, I was starting a new job, too, under much different circumstances.  My brother had just died, and my sister was on the verge of starting her slow decline.  I am in a much happier place right now.

May 15, 2014:  New Job and New Snow

Well, I have completed the first day of my new job.  The people are friendly and supportive.  My closest coworkers are helpful and understanding.  They laugh at my jokes.  I have established a chocolate drawer already, and I acquired a new badge from Human Resources.  One that reflects my new position and department.  Overall, it wasn't horrible, although I truly miss the work and people at my old job.

It is snowing currently.  Sitting in my office at the university, I am watching thick, fat snowflakes falling.  They're starting to accumulate on the grass.  It would be a lovely scene if it weren't the middle of May.  New snow at this time of year is about as welcome as a case of explosive diarrhea.  Lake Superior is still frozen over, and, two weeks ago, I still had snow drifts in my backyard.  Winter is never going to end.

Saint Marty is ready to start singing "Let It Go."

I'm tired of letting things go...

May 11: Spoiler Alerts, Tracy K. Smith, "Sci-Fi"

Recently, I have been thinking a great deal about the future.  It has a lot to do with my new job.  In less than a month, I will be starting over.  Again.  It will mean a change in my schedule and duties and coworkers.  Again.  This coming change has caused me a few sleepless nights.

Over the past two years, I have settled into a new life.  I know what time I have to be to work tomorrow.  I know what I have to do all day long.  I know when I'll take my breaks, eat my lunch.  I know when my work day will be over.  Granted, two years ago, I was in the same situation I am now:  facing an uncertain future.  That future is now my present reality.

In two months' time, my uncertain future will be a reality.  I may be happier.  I may not be happier.  I don't know.  I not a big fan of uncertainty.  I read the ending of books first, spoilers about movies.  I knew that Han Solo died in the new Star Wars movie before I went to see it.  I knew that Dumbledore died before I read the The Half Blood Prince.  Jon Snow is alive.  Glen didn't get eaten by walkers.  Jesus rose from the dead.  No surprises, that's my motto.

Unfortunately, the real world does not work that way.  The future remains a cliffhanger, and I'm waiting for the next episode.

Hopefully, Saint Marty won't be caught in a zombie apocalypse.

Speaking of the future . . .

Sci-Fi

by:  Tracy K. Smith

There will be no edges, but curves.

Clean lines pointing only forward.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared

Corners, will be replaced with nuance,

Just like the dinosaurs gave way

To mounds and mounds of ice.

Women will still be women, but

The distinction will be empty. Sex,

Having outlived every threat, will gratify

Only the mind, which is where it will exist.

For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves

Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.

The oldest among us will recognize that glow—

But the word sun will have been re-assigned

To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device

Found in households and nursing homes.

And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks

To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,

Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift

In the haze of space, which will be, once

And for all, scrutable and safe.

May 17: Feasting and Carousing, Graduation Party, Eleanor Lerman, "Starfish," New Cartoon

"What a night!" he repeated, hoarsely.  "What feasting and carousing!  A real gorge!  I must have eaten the remains of thirty lunches.  Never have I seen such leavings, and everything well-ripened and seasoned with the passage of time and the heat of the day.  Oh, it was rich, my friends, rich!"

Templeton is a total hedonist.  He stuffs himself on rotten meat and popcorn kernels and half-eaten hotdogs.  He doesn't worry about indigestion or his stomach exploding.  He's a rat.  Rats scavenge.  Rats eat.  Rats don't care about anything but themselves, at least in the Charlotte's Web universe.

I have indulged myself a little bit today.  I went to McDonald's for breakfast.  I read The Fault in Our Stars.  I went to my niece's high school graduation party, at which I ate a lot of stuff I shouldn't have eaten.  Soft pretzels with nacho cheese.  Cheesy potatoes.  Mac and cheese.  (My whole gastrointestinal system will probably be backed up for a week as a result!)  And now I'm sitting on my couch, watching an episode of The Lawrence Welk Show (another guilty pleasure).  After a week of mourning, not to mention starting a new job, I decided to give myself a little vacation.

Of course, I'm experiencing a little guilt now.  I should have been more productive.  Maybe picked sticks off my lawn or raked my backyard.  Worked on a new poem.  But I didn't.  Sometimes, you really do have to just...stop.  Breathe.  Relax.

Tonight's poem comes from a poet named Eleanor Lerman, and it's about appreciating life, in all its facets.

Saint Marty needs to do that a little more often.

Starfish

by:  Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does.  It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee.  It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee.  Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night
the channel was full of starfish.  And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud.  Reeds
speak to you of the natural world:  they whisper,
they sing.  And herons pass by.  Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment?  Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing.  There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart.  Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become.  And then life lets you go home to think
about all this.  Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out.  This is life's way of letting you know that
you are lucky.  (It won't give you smart or brave,
so you'll have to settle for lucky.)  Because you
were born at a good time.  Because you
were able to listen when people spoke to you.  Because you
stopped when you should have started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert.  (Pie for the dog, as well.)  And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Confessions of Saint Marty

 

April 28: Grading Exams, Mushy Brain, "Web" Dip

I have been grading Introduction to Film exams all afternoon.  I have completed one section, and I have another section to go.  My brain is a little mushy at the moment.  I needed to take a little break, so I decided to blog for a while.

My mood has improved from yesterday slightly.  Very slightly.  I have a grading headache, probably compounded somewhat by my new glasses.  I finally bit the bullet and purchased bifocals.  It's amazing how much clearer the laptop screen is.  Not to mention the fact that I haven't been playing glasses-on/glasses-off all day.  I can actually read without lifting the page to the end of my nose.

In a couple weeks, I begin my new job.  The hours are going to be like 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.  A normal schedule.  That may sound appealing to some of you, but it doesn't to me.  I like flexibility in my days, and there ain't gonna be much flexibility to go 'round from now on.

Which brings me to my Web dip question for today:

Am I going to like my new job?

And the answer from E. B. White is:

The crickets sang in the grasses.  They sang the song of summer's ending, a sad, monotonous song.  "Summer is over and gone," they sang.  "Over and gone, over and gone.  Summer is dying, dying."

Well, that answer did nothing to improve Saint Marty's state of mind.

Do you like my new glasses?

April 2: Gratitude Twenty-Nine

I am grateful for a new job tonight.

Yes, I received a phone call yesterday from the human resources department at the hospital, offering me one of the positions for which I'd interviewed.  It was a relief, since, that very morning, I was contemplating things like unemployment and food stamps and foreclosures.

This afternoon, I called human resources back and accepted the position.  I didn't really have much choice.  My wife recited the serenity prayer to me this evening.  It's about accepting powerlessness in some situations and taking control in others.  God's in charge and blah, blah, blah.  Yeah, I get it.

I have a new job.  I have to leave my old job.  I accept those things.  Can't change them.

Therefore, Saint Marty is grateful.

Don't study poetry, either

November 29: The Burning Question, Still Sick, New Job

I know a lot of my faithful disciples have a burning question that I've been avoiding for the last couple of weeks.  It's generally not my style to avoid any subject in this blog.  I pretty much confront issues head-on.  This particular issue, however, has been dogging me ever since I finished my Christmas essay a week or so ago.

So, no more dodging reporters and paparazzi.  I will now answer the question that has been plaguing all of my cyber fans for weeks now.  Go ahead and ask it:  When are you going to write another friggin' poem?

Time to come clean

Now, if you will just get those cameras out of my face and pull all those mics back a little, I would like to make an official statement:

Saint Marty realizes that he has been remiss in his duties as official blog poet.  He apologizes for any harm this absence may have caused any of his loyal disciples.  He would like to assure his fans that he has not abandoned poetry.  It still remains his first love.  However, Saint Marty has had to take some time to deal with other, personal issues.  He hopes, in the next day or so, to be back at his journal, writing a new poem.  He thanks all of his followers for their patience and kindness during this difficult time.  And now, Saint Marty will take some questions.  You, down in the front.

Is it true that you've been battling some kind of illness?

Yes, I have been sick these last few weeks.  As you can tell by my voice, I'm still sick.  I'm hoping that I've turned a corner and will start mending soon, but that has been a contributing factor to my absence from poetry.  Next question, please.

Reports state that your wife has started a new job.  Has that also been keeping you away from writing poetry?

It is true that my wife has just started substitute teaching for a local Headstart program.  However, she just began this employment, so its effects on my writing are still up in the air.  But I'm excited for my wife and family.  Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.  Are there any more questions?

Do you have any idea what your next poem will be about when you get back to work?

That's a really good question.  I make it a policy to not talk too much about a project that's in the process of being written.  However, I can tell you that I have been thinking about my annual Christmas poem and a few other poems.  But, right now, it's just too early to go into details.  I have time for one more question.

Is it true that you still harbor bad feelings about not being chosen as the recipient of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature?

While I was disappointed at the Swedish Academy's decision to not honor my work, I have tried to move past this setback.  Again, I'm dealing with many issues (illness and teaching and financial difficulty and chocolate shortages).  The Nobel Prize in Literature is just one of many pots on my burners.  Thanks you all for coming to my press conference.  Please, become one of my official disciples before you leave the blog.

With that brief statement and press conference, Saint Marty retreats from the spotlight once more, with promises to his legions of fans that he is still working on poetry.  We wish him well.

April 1: New Job, Psalm 24, Kids Growing Up

This morning, I taught poetry to my daughter's fourth grade class.  I was a little anxious about it.  I've never taught poetry to kids that age before.  I had my lesson, displays, examples, and a banana.  Well, I was a huge hit, as far as I can tell.  The kids' hands were flying, poems were being written, and nobody got sent to the principal's office.  I was quite relieved.

Because I did that this morning, I took the day off work.  I got to sleep in an hour or so longer than I usually sleep.  Very nice.  I got to take my daughter to school, also very nice.  I went for a walk with my wife and son, and I got to go out to Red Lobster for lunch.  It was a great day, pretty much.

My daughter is, at this moment, on a field trip to see the musical Beauty and the Beast in Appleton, Wisconsin.  It's a four hour bus ride, one way.  I have to pick her up at 2:30 a.m. tonight.  I always have a hard time when my daughter spreads her wings a little bit.  I know she has to grow up, but, being an incredibly over-protective father, I prefer she grow up under my close supervision.  So, I'm having a little problem with that tonight.

The other thing I'm having a little problem with is my wife got a new job today.  She got a call for an interview this morning, interviewed this afternoon, and was offered the job immediately.  This news is good.  She's been out of work for almost two years, but it does throw a crow bar, monkey wrench, and jack hammer into things like child care, piano lessons, choir rehearsals, etc.  Not to mention the fact that I'm not even sure we're going to be making money, once the daycare and babysitting money is subtracted.  However, there's not much I can do about it.  I just have to roll with this one. 

I know, I know.  This post isn't very positive.  I'm trying.  I really am.  But even the psalm for today is verging on nostalgic, if not downright melancholy.  Forgive me.

Saint Marty has a lot on his mind tonight, and he has to be up at 2 a.m. to pick up his daughter.  A looooooooooooong night ahead of him.

Psalm 24:  Letting Go

My daughter left this afternoon,
Will be gone until tomorrow morning.
I packed her backpack for the trip.
Breadsticks and cheese, for protein, health.
Banana, apples, so I look responsible
To chaperons, teachers.  Vanilla goldfish
Crackers for dessert, to remind her
She's still a child, not to be concerned
With weight, body, hair, boys.
I gave her one hundred dollars,
Lectured her about responsibility,
Budget for food, souvenirs, told her
Not to take money from her pocket
Until she had to pay for something,
In case strangers were near, strangers
Who take little girls from parents,
From school field trips to theaters,
From ten-year-old lives.  They take
Little girls, I told her, make them
Disappear like Harry Houdini, send
Them to places of precious, lost things:
Her charm bracelet, mommy's pearl earring,
Grandma Cheryl with her big laugh.
I gave my daughter a pillow for sleeping,
There and back, with flannel pillowcase
That matches her bed sheets, a gift
From her godmother for her third birthday.
I packed a thermos of water and ice,
Because I know how she craves water
The way a lilac bush does in May
To grow green, bud, blossom into summer.
I did all these things for her, then
I let her go.  I sit here now in silence,
Think of her far away, out of reach.
I think of Mary as she watched her son
Ascend into the sky, wonder if she
Packed Him a snack, honey, dark bread,
For His long journey away from her.

Letting go is hard work