It has been a day of travel and unpacking. This afternoon, I picked out the music for my father's funeral, and I finished writing his obituary, which I sent to the funeral home. Then I corrected two sets of quizzes and did my lesson plans for teaching tomorrow afternoon and evening. Tonight, I will select the readings for my father's funeral.
This week is just beginning, and I'm already a little exhausted. I think that I will make myself a drink this evening. Something tall and strong.
A Classic Saint Marty from Ash Wednesday three years ago . . .
February 18, 2015: Most Reliable Companions, Ash Wednesday, God's Love Number One
Gradually, [Annie Ives] found that her most reliable companions were books, and decided that her best friends were people who loved them as much as she did. Among the gifts that came to their apartment in the outpouring of public sympathy [for their son's death] were four copies of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, which, along with other novels, she donated to the library or gave to Carmen, whom she always helped with her English, and to her son, Pablo. One of the joys of her life was to take walks with Caroline and Pablo down Broadway to browse in the college bookstores. Nothing pleased her more than to search for mysterious and new authors from different parts of the world, to find a cart filled with exoticisms recommended in Columbia literature classes...
Annie has to reclaim her happiness after the death of her son. For a while, she is caught up in the business of grief. Answering condolence cards and letters sent from relatives, friends, and strangers. Listening to her son's jazz records over and over. But then she realizes she needs to rejoin life, and she does it through little joys, like shopping for books with her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend. That's how she finds herself again.
Today is Ash Wednesday. I will not be attending a church service this evening. I have to teach. However, like Annie, I have to regain a little equilibrium in my life. For far too long, I have been focusing on the challenges of my life. Tonight, I am going to take a step in the other direction. I'm going to talk about a time today that I felt God's love.
I think Annie Ives feels God's love when she's with Caroline and Pablo, browsing through stacks of books. Today, I felt God's love when I went to start my car this morning in fifteen below zero windchills, and the engine just fired right up. I am so lucky to have a reliable car and a warm house. Tonight, after I'm done teaching my film class at the university, I will go out to my car, and it will fire right up again. I will drive home, put on my pajamas, and enjoy the comfort of my bed.
That is God's love for Saint Marty today. A running car in my driveway.
And a poem for this evening. Something that makes me smile when I think of my dad . . .
Something Better
by: Martin Achatz
I want something better for my kids,
The way all parents want their offspring
To attend college, law or medical
School. Do something extraordinary.
We scrub toilets, paint walls, deep-fry potatoes
For thirty or forty years, put everything
On hold until we're sure our daughters
Can study veterinary medicine, our sons
Learn to x-ray broken vertebrae, tibias,
Clavicles. My uncle drove to the GM plant
For over thirty-five years before he received
His pension, then began to paint oil landscapes
Of places he’d dreamed about in rush hour
Traffic on I-75, places full of waves,
Evergreens the color of Chinese jade,
Places he knew he'd never see,
All so his daughter could study,
Become an engineer at Ford.
I don’t want my children to teach
College English part-time, work
Eleven-hour days in an office,
Scribble poems on napkins, lunch bags,
Margins of graded essays, dreaming
Always of a time when those words,
Cut and polished and set in lines of gold,
Will buy vacations to Stockholm or Rome,
Ballet lessons and birthday parties
In hot air balloons. I want my kids
To know a life better than mine,
Even if it means I eat bologna
With cheese every day, pretending
My cut of lunch meat is somehow
Superior to the one my father ate
At work for over fifty years.
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