June 17: Royal Danish, Barbecued Chicken, Small Stuff

"Billy--" said Valencia Merble.

"Hm?"

"You want to talk about our silver pattern?"

"Sure."

"I've got it narrowed down to pretty much either Royal Danish or Rambler Rose."

"Rambler Rose," said Billy.

"It isn't something we should rush into," she said.  "I mean--whatever we decide on, that's what we're going to have to live with the rest of our lives."

Billy studied the pictures.  "Royal Danish," he said at last.

"Colonial Moonlight is nice, too."

"Yes, it is," said Billy Pilgrim.

Billy doesn't really give a shit about silver patterns.  He's making small talk, hoping that Valencia will eventually stop talking or leave.  He's being polite to his fiancee.  Valencia, on the other hand, sees silver patterns as a lifetime commitment.  They will have to live with this decision until they die.

It's all a matter of perspective, I guess.  Billy doesn't see the choice between Rambler Rose and Royal Danish as that important.  For Valencia, the decision is akin to signing a Middle East peace accord.  It's binding, and it's permanent.

I understand Billy's point of view.  There are some decisions that I don't sweat.  Shorts or pants.  Chocolate chip cookies or sugar cookies.  Fox News or real news.  Everyone has their own set of priorities.

Last night, I had dinner at my parents' house.  Chicken--fried, broiled, and barbecued.  It was delicious.  However, I nearly came to blows with one of my siblings because there was barbecue chicken on the table.  This person simply kept bitching and bitching and bitching about the barbecue chicken.  It started as soon as I sat down on at the dinner table and went on and on and on.  It ended with raised voices and hurt feelings.

I suppose, in this situation, I was Billy.  My sibling was Valencia.  I simply wanted to tell my sibling that chicken preparation is not a life-and-death choice (unless you choose raw).  In the grand scheme of things, it just doesn't matter.  As the old saying goes, "Don't sweat the small stuff."

So, I don't care about chicken.  I don't like barbecue, so I choose fried or broiled.  If that's not available, I will have a bowl of Cheerios.

Saint Marty is thankful today for the big stuff:  love and faith and joy.

August 13: Green Heron, McDonald's Breakfast, Living in the Moment

I positively ruined the dinner of a green heron on the creek last week.  It was fairly young and fairly determined not to fly away, but not to be too foolhardy, either.  So it had to keep an eye on me.  I watched it for half an hour, during which time it stalked about in the creek moodily, expanding and contracting its incredible, brown-streaked neck.  It made only three lightning-quick stabs at strands of slime for food, and all three times occurred when my head was turned slightly away.

Dillard has a habit of discovering things like giant water bugs sucking the life out of frogs and green herons hunting for breakfast.  Perhaps it's because her mind doesn't seem preoccupied with everyday worries about work or school or brake jobs.  She is totally present in the moment at Tinker Creek, open to anything that happens to cross her path.  In the passage above, it happens to be a hungry green heron.

I'm sitting in McDonald's right now, having breakfast with my family.  It's something we do every Saturday for a couple hours, just to get out of the house and talk without distraction.  No television.  No piles of laundry or bills to pay.  We just claim a table and try to solve the world's problems.

I don't know if that's exactly the same as what Dillard does at the creek.  There's a certain amount of living in the present on Saturday mornings.  Plus, we aren't so focused on the little things.  It's more about the big picture, thinking about next week, next month, next year.  Concerns.  Hopes.

Plus, there's a lot of green herons who come into McDonald's on Saturday mornings to feed, if you follow me.  This morning, there were a lot of bicyclists because of a race happening today.  I haven't seen so much spandex since the 1980s.  From what I could tell, they were all carb loading before they hit the trails.

The weather in the Upper Peninsula has taken a turn to the misty and cool.  Some rainstorms are supposed to move in this afternoon.  It's the kind of day that makes me want to take a nap as soon as I wake up.  A good book day.  A sit-in-McDonald's-all-morning day.  Perhaps we will come up with a solution to world hunger over our pancakes.  Draft a Middle East peace accord on some napkins.  Write the first paragraph of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on the back of a receipt.

Saint Marty is living in the moment, with all the herons around him eating their McMuffins.