I may have figured out a solution for my malaise. We'll see how it goes.
In the meantime, the trick-or-treating continues all over J-land. Feel free to drop by (previous entry), whether you have a journal link to leave or not. I've added Kit-Kats to the mix!
I'm just trying to decide what I want to do ~
Public or private?
AOL or not?
Eclectic or focused?
Journal writing or other writing?
Four funerals in one month is a lot. At least at my age. Each one of them a reminder of how little we know about one another. Each one of them a reminder that we will, every one of us, be remembered in some way.
How do we spend our time? How do we spend ourselves?
I'm feeling introspective just when I don't want to be.
Yesterday: calling hours for the fourth of the recently departed. I didn't know him at all, although I'm sure we were introduced at parties on occasion. My connection is his sister-in-law, a classmate from boarding school (35th reunion upcoming, for those of us skinny enough to put in an appearance). I was there probably less than an hour, but here's who I encountered:
the family, of course, which includes my friend, whom I have known since we were girls struggling in an advanced English course with probably the best teacher either of us would ever encounter, and her husband and three daughters, including the gorgeous young woman I first visited in a NICU 18 years ago after she had had the temerity to arrive three months early, and her sister, who has just lost her husband, and her mother, a retired Presbyterian minister;
another mom from those Montessori days that weren't really so long ago;
a woman whom I worked with when she was a legal secretary and I was a lawyer;
and a set of parents, now brand-new acquaintances, who also have a displaced Tulane daughter.
The best thing about my life is the variety of people I encounter. In any given week, I am teaching in an Orthodox Jewish school, studying at a Jesuit Catholic university, and worshipping in a progressive Presbyterian church. The funerals have been for a brilliant lawyer-educator-world traveler-musician-writer, a solid and and steady veteran-engineer-Mason (yeah, that part was interesting), a generous musician and vocalist with a vast circle of influence among colleagues and students, a gifted artisan whose work shines across our city. All of them spouses and parents.
Life is so much and so full and so short. How can I live it better? How can I write about it and do it justice?
On the island beach near Northport Harbor on Prince Edward Island, crabs and gulls have come and gone.
Three weeks ago, a memorial service for an 84-year-old lawyer-actor-singer-educator-writer-war hero-friend, all par excellence.
Last week, a service for a good friend's father, another gentleman in his early eighties who also served in World War II with distinction and then came home to build a family and a career and a warm circle of friends.
This week, the service for my daughter's voice teacher, only 61 and a woman so full of life and music that she could not possibly have simply collapsed and died on Tuesday.
Next week, the service for a friend's brother-in-law, aged 54.
**********
One of yesterday's readings:
Going to Heaven!
I don’t know when—
Pray do not ask me how!
Indeed I’m too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to Heaven!
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the Shepherd’s arm!
Perhaps you’re going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first
Save just a little space for me
Close to the two I lost—
The smallest “Robe” will fit me
And just a bit of “Crown”—
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home—
I’m glad I don’t believe it
For it would stop my breath—
And I’d like to look a little more
At such a curious Earth!
I’m glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the might Autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.
~ ED (79)
She overcame a devastating experience in high school, holding her head high and exuding compassion and good humor.
She weathered several disappointments during her junior year at a school where the word "Achievement" is spelled in 100-point font.
She spent a year-and-a-half looking at colleges, preparing applications, and suffering the endless scrutiny that that process entails.
She went off to college 1000 miles away, got turned back by a hurricane, came home and replanned her life in 48 hours, and went off to college again, 2500 miles away that time.
The child whose "phone phobia," as she jokingly refers to it, means that a telephone call to one of her best friends is an agonizing transaction, put together courses and books, joined an intramural team, and applied and trained as a volunteer, all in a completely unknown environment.
She's keeping one eye on the future, making plans to return to the city she wants to call her own, and one eye on the present, making friends, playing soccer, and working at an animal shelter.
I have no idea how my DNA could possibly have made a contribution to such an independent, balanced, and self-assured young woman, but I would be happy to claim any responsibility at all.
I want to give Harriet Miers the benefit of the doubt. I really do. That tends to be my naturally ingrained approach to almost all people in almost all circumstances. One of those wishy-washy liberal things, I suppose.
But Give Me A Break. The Senate Judiciary Committe has returned her judicial questionnaire and asked for more information, stating that her responses were "inadequate," "insufficient," and "insulting."
Contrary to popular opinion as generated by prime time television, what lawyers mostly do is write. Voluminous amounts of writing. They do that after they have done their research (or gotten someone to do it for them). Voluminous amounts of research. It's understandable that television viewers may not be aware of this basic fact of lawyer life, because a television show depicting lawyers doing much of what lawyers actually do would be insufferably boring. However, the sad reality is that most lawyers are not sexy babes in short skirts arguing dramatic cases before curmudgeonly judges. Most lawyers are scrunched up behind a computer with stacks of papers and books sliding off all available surfaces as they try to make enough sense of conflicting arguments to create cogent ones of their own.
So how embarrassing is it that a lawyer would produce written work that is characterized as inadequate, insufficient and insulting? Let me count the ways.
No, on second thought, that would be one of those boring lawyer activities.
Ms. Miers, however, SHOULD be engaged in boring lawyer activities. She needs to convince the rest of us that, should she make it to the court, she will be capable of developing and writing an opinion.
Not lookin' good so far.
