'Tis a gift to be simple.
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My other voices
Joy
Nephew graduated from the high school he started in as a freshman four years ago and his younger sister and I cheered for him, though we couldn't really see him, so far back from the stage and off to the side were our seats in the bleachers. Admittedly my part in this was minor compared to other graduate's adults, but I was allowed a full measure of joy along with all the others. My joy got a boost from the letter the young man received today from the university: he will attend with all expenses including tuition, housing, books, and living expenses paid for him. He will also have a university job for ten hours a week so that he can afford a social life and some foolish expenditures besides. He will enter this larger world in late August. After working--not really hard, admittedly--to redeem himself after the expulsion and various tickets that he's gotten, the slate is clean and ready for him to mark it with greater care. It's an exciting time for him. Be happy with me. 
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The fine weekend that is ending could have been better. What would have made it better would have been another day or two off of work. Having Friday off of work helped, but Monday and Tuesday would just about take care of my recreational needs for the week. Saturday I was out the door before Parker woke up, which doesn't actually mean that I left early, but that I was early enough to evade parental responsibility until evening. What luxury to go to the coffee shop and take my drink with me to a park to sketch. I don't think I could find the park again which is a shame because it presented so much interesting subject material that choosing what to draw was difficult. I was happy to find some heavy construction equipment parked at odd angles and began drawing, but I was very tempted to change my focus to the pavilion set at the edge of the lagoon, drained for the construction project and revealing all sorts of interesting secrets that its water usually kept out of sight. I was also drawn to the idea of recording some of the people who were enjoying their sunny day in the park. There was a wide variety of humanity to choose from. A young man wearing an artsy cap worked with a beautiful blonde--his girlfriend? a model he'd hired?--having her pose this way and that as he snapped photos of her with an impressively complex camera. Young boys fished the shallow remnants of the lagoon--"For what?" I wondered, as the mud-tinged water seemed too shallow to harbor anything that employed gills. "They're crabbing," my companion suggested. I suppose catching anything didn't really matter to the boys. They frequently pulled their lines out of the water and raced around the perimeter of the lagoon, scaling fieldstone ledges and moved by the first warm sunshiny Saturday of the year to hoot and crow like birds. Some of the subjects were older, professionals by the look of them, dressed in khakkis and bearing clipboards and serious expressions as they paced from point A to point B and stood, thinking or so it seemed, and then paced on for another segment. They looked like they were performing some set routine with planned sequences of progress and pauses. Joggers and runners passed through in pairs or singly. Another person's traverse was slower and his partner was a dog who trotted next to his master's wheelchair. They stopped to watch the fisherboys for a while and one of the clipboard-pacing guys visited with the man for a little while, petting the German Shepherd. The dog didn't lose his on the job alertness even while being petted by the stranger. You might think that I was so busy checking out the distractions that I never did draw at all, but I did just about finish drawing the whatchamacallit which stretched out, mud-streaked and muscular in the sunshine. It looked much simpler before I really LOOKED at it as I drew. It was a great workout, I will say that about it. Today was a day to put even that kind of work aside and my buddy Bonnie and I launched this year's gardening season. There's nothing to do yet, but have the best garden of the season--the one you have in mind before the seeds don't sprout, before the rabbits eat everything, before the bugs infest, before the wilt, the drought, the weeds, the sick of the very idea of working out in the yard. After shopping at the garden shop we had a mid-afternoon breakfast and a long visit. As I said, it was a very good weekend. I think I just might be able to make it through the workweek so that I can have another one.
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If it's just after seven o'clock in the morning and I'm posting this while sitting in Starbucks, dressed to eyeliner and mascara, having driven a tedious route to the next town and back it must mean that [cue the confetti, strike up the band] Nephew is back in school!!! 
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My nephew's school expulsion has changed the structure of my days. Some of those changes are ones I like. Because I am not driving him to school where the day's instruction starts at 7:15 I can sleep later than six. I now wake without an alarm clock and find that seven o'clock is when human beings are designed to wake up. Some changes are less clearly good. I'm not spreading the news of Nephew's state of disgrace to the rest of the family and since all of the upset is so much on my mind, I don't call Rose or my sisters as I used to. When Rose calls me I stick to safe subjects and stay as quiet as possible. Rose has commented on the change in my habits and I plead all sorts of different reasons for it, knowing that I'm not meeting my daughterly responsibilities and knowing that I am not going to change until Nephew's life is back on track. Deceit has led to another change to my normal habits. Before mid-February I'd come home after work and take an hour or so before going to pick Newphew up from school. N would have prefered me to come directly from work, but I knew that a cushion of time to myself is vital to my being fit to live with, so I said I couldn't come for him any earlier. Now that he's home (again, all the long day long), my coming right home would betray my scheming ways so I hide out for an hour or two every day before coming home. I knit (at Starbucks), I draw (at Starbucks), I read (at Starbucks), I people watch, I write, I stare out the window (all at Starbucks) and sometimes I even go places that are not Starbucks. The ladies at the little yarn shop are used to my showing up every couple of weeks, my car is often in the parking lot at the driving range, the only car there since snow only recently receded from the range and the muddy ground is still too soft to take a storm of golf balls. It's a good place to sketch and to keep track of which birds are arriving back from winters spent in the warmth of the South. I come home at a different time every day and my vague answers to questions of when I start and get off of work have succeeded in discouraging the question being asked at all. Yes, I feel guilt about my sneaky ways. The only thing that would feel worse would be not having any time to myself at all so until Nephew is granted re-admission to school my lazy ways will continue.
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I began the day in a leisurely day-off-of-work way. My coffee was still hot in the cup, lightened with cream, an Easter indulgence with some left over for after-the-holidays, I'd let myself wander in the direction of doing a couple of sketches, seduced by indigo shadows that branches have draped over bright gentle drifts of snow outside my window. Winter light is exceptional; it's strong and no-nonsense and in the morning textures snap to in response to its rigorous treatment. Tree bark is crisply delineated, wood trim on Mary's house stands out strong from the shadows it casts to the west out of sight of the morning sun. To let the gift of that light go unsavored would be foolish, I thought, Just a quick sketch or two before getting to work around here. The sketches led to pulling out a watercolor stack that I'd stowed to take out for warm weather that will come, but as of now only taken on faith. It's mid-March, it's comprehensively winter outside and the colors have waited long enough. This morning they tinted the last sketch. It will look horrifyingly bad to me tomorrow, but this morning I'm pleased with it. I was listening to a podcast that I listen to every morning. The podcast that starts my listening every day bears the responsibility for how long I let myself enjoy all of this. Garrison Keillor's poem pick today recognized birthday boy Lawrence Ferlingetti whose "The Changing Light" reeled me in. In presenting you with the idea of the power of light, I'll defer to Ferlinghetti; his picture paints a better picture of it than I did. The Changing Light The changing light at San Francisco is none of your East Coast light none of your pearly light of Paris The light of San Francisco is a sea light an island light And the light of fog blanketing the hills drifting in at night through the Golden Gate to lie on the city at dawn. And then the halcyon late mornings after the fog burns off and the sun paints white houses with the sea light of Greece with sharp clean shadows making the town look like it had just been painted But the wind comes up at four o' clock sweeping the hills And then the veil light of early evening And then another scrim when the new night fog floats in And in that vale of light the city drifts anchorless upon the ocean Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Another day, another blizzard
It takes a lot to shut life down around here. We don't fold 'em for subzero, we don't quit over snow that comes half-way to our knees. We just suit up and get out there and push the car out of the drift and live life on schedule. Today, however we have enough "lot" to shut every school and many businesses. There's a foot of snow out there blasting horizontally and tiny flakes still falling vertically. Usually young men with shovels are expected to dig us out of snowstorms, but today I'm waiting to hear back from the man with the plow. He's a busy man, though and it might take until tonight or even tomorrow before he can catch up with calls. I just hope he gets to it before we run out of groceries. Those young men have a hungry look about them this morning.
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Another view of experience
Experience is a great teacher
of the value of experience,
its claustrophobic prudence,
its gloomy name-the-disasters-
in-advance charisma. ~William Matthews, from "Misgivings" There certainly is a lot to be said for the things we learn through the hard work of experience which is a benefit of getting through challenges and pleasures of life. On the other hand, not venturing to do something because you've gotten stung by something in the past or looking for new occurances of old problems will keep you shut in very small spaces.
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