May 24: Barbecue, Normal, Poem from "Kyrie"

This afternoon, I had a socially distanced Memorial Day weekend barbecue at my parents' house.  My wife, kids, and I sat on the back porch, six feet away from my sisters and mother, and ate hot dogs and bratwurst and watermelon. 

We hadn't been together like that since mid-March.  Yes, we were careful, even though my sister, Rose, who has Down syndrome, really didn't comprehend the six-foot distance rule and tried several times to approach and hug us.  It wasn't "normal" by any means.  But it was as close as we could get to the Sunday dinners we used to have pre-pandemic.

I've heard people bridling against the term "new normal" recently.  Sometimes that bridling borders on anger.  I understand the emotions behind this reaction.  It's a symptom of mourning.  People are grieving all that has been lost because of Covid-19:  making a quick trip to the grocery store to satisfy your craving for Cheetos; stopping to check on your elderly parents on your way home from work; sitting in a church pew beside your neighbors on a Sunday morning and catching up; going for a walk and not having to wear a face mask; attending community parades and events.  All these things have become part of history for now.  The world has shifted, and not gradually.  The change was seismic.  A rift in the fabric of society that appeared almost overnight.  And it has left all of humankind reeling from the loss.

Yet I don't think it's healthy to maintain a death-hold on the "normal" we used to know.  Doing that will simply prolong the pandemic.  By refusing to put on that face mask, insisting on gathering in bars or restaurants or churches, people are not re-establishing normal.  They are just refusing to deal with their grief (and also spreading the virus more, pushing us toward another complete shutdown).  It's like setting a place at the dinner table for a person who has died.  It may feel comforting to cling to the habit, but the deceased person's chair will still remain empty.

So let's not think of "old" normal or "new" normal.  Let's not think of normal at all.  If you know my family, normal is not a word that comes to mind anyway.  Instead, let's think about how to respect each other, support each other, love each other.  That's what will get us all through this.

Tonight, I celebrate time spent with family.  Safely.  Filled with laughter and teasing.  The miracle of togetherness.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

What were they thinking--everyone we knew,
in school, in church, took me aside
to praise--to me--my sister, as if
I were another of her parents,
or else they were, that proud and fond:
aren't you lucky, isn't she gifted,
doesn't she look grand in her new blue suit?
I had a new suit cut from the same bolt,
quick mind, good heart--vivid blossoms
in other light--yes yes, she did, she was,
what were they thinking?  Terrible,
to be the one who should have died.

September 20: Rumor of Sadness, Warm Day, Philip Levine, "Night Thoughts Over a Sick Child," New Cartoon

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever.  Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year--the days when summer is changing into fall--the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Yes, the end of summer is a time of sadness and change.  The trees are preparing for winter.  Crickets seem to call for frost and snow at night.  At dusk, the sun turns everything gold--the grass, bark on the pines, swings on the playground.  The whole world is a sepia photograph.


Today felt like August, not late September.  Near 80 degrees.  Sky, blue as church window glass.  The wind was temperate and constant, making the oranges, greens, and yellows flicker and spark in the trees.  It was a perfect day.

Autumn is my favorite time of year, but it also fills me with a kind of melancholy.  I suppose it's that rumor of sadness and change that White writes about.  Something coming to an end.  Soon it will be cold and white in the mornings, and the sidewalks will be a carpet of fallen maple and aspen and oak leaves.

No, I'm not suffering from seasonal affective disorder.  Yet.  That comes after the first six months of winter.  I'm simply mourning the end of summer.  One of the reasons I've chosen to live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my family is the acuteness of the seasons.  Spring, summer, fall, winter--they're all magnified here.  Spring is greener.  Summer, hotter.  Autumn, oranger.  Winter, whiter and colder.

Today, I'm being reflective.  Thinking about everything that's happened and changed.  It's been a year of upheaval for sure.  It makes me nostalgic for simpler times in my life.  Retro times, if you will, when happiness was easier to come by and worries were just shadows in a brightly lit room.

My son is still coughing, but not so acutely.  He has more energy and is hungry again.  He's on the mend.  I found a poem by Phil Levine about caring for a sick child.  It certainly touches upon the fears of all parents when it comes to the illness of a son or daughter.  Especially a very young one.

Saint Marty hopes you love it as much as he does.

Night Thoughts Over a Sick Child

by:  Philip Levine

Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep,
I keep night watch. Looking for
signs to quiet fear, I creep
closer to his bed and hear
his breath come and go, holding
my own as if my own were
all I paid. Nothing I bring,
say, or do has meaning here.

Outside, ice crusts on river
and pond; wild hare come to my
door pacified by torture.
No less ignorant than they
of what grips and why, I am
moved to prayer, the quaint gestures
which ennoble beyond shame
only the mute listener.

No one hears. A dry wind shifts
dry snow, indifferently;
the roof, rotting beneath drifts,
sighs and holds. Terrified by
sleep, the child strives toward
consciousness and the known pain.
If it were mine by one word
I would not save any man,

myself or the universe
at such cost: reality.
Heir to an ancestral curse
though fallen from Judah's tree,
I take up into my arms my hopes,
my son, for what it's worth give
bodily warmth. When he escapes
his heritage, then what have

I left but false remembrance
and the name? Against that day
there is no armor or stance,
only the frail dignity
of surrender, the dumb beast's fall,
unseen in the frozen snow.   

Confessions of Saint Marty

 

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