spring re-visited

Spring is such a lovely season - why not experience it again? 

This week I did just that and traveled to the Suwanee river area of Florida for a few days of R&R at my favorite campground.  I haven’t seen dogwood bloom since I moved permanently to SW Florida.  I’d forgotten the surprise to see the stark white of the blossoms tucked among the new spring green of other trees.  I wonder if Red Bud can live here?  They always followed the dogwood trees in bloom in the MidWest.  I hear different birdsong.  I can recognize the cardinal.  Not being a true birder - other chirps and twitters I can’t name, but enjoy them all the same.  There are the tiniest white flowers scattered among the grass that I can't name but can still enjoy.

In northern Florida,  Spring seems more gentle, more soft and quiet unlike the Spring I wrote about a few blogs ago.  Don't you feel the hope in the season of spring?  This campground owner already has his tidy garden of tomato and pepper plants set out. 

Robert Goulet sang “if ever I would leave you, it couldn’t be in springtime”.  I feel the same about the time I will eventually clock out of this life.  It just couldn’t be in springtime!  I’d miss too much!  ~pam

Precious Mem'ry

“Precious Memories, how they linger….”  so goes the first line of that old hymn.  Precious indeed.  As I slide into my 7^th decade I’m amazed at all the rich memories life has given me. 

In my little town in SW Florida, trains go through several times a day.  If I’m not distracted doing something, the train whistle brings back memories of my childhood in a little Kansas town criss-crossed with train tracks.  We’d put pebbles on the track to see the cars smash them to powder.  Rich kids put pennies on the tracks.  

On the “Goodies but Oldies” radio station I sometimes hear the tune “Sleepwalker” by Santo and Johnny.  I am again 18 and a curvy waitress in a roadhouse diner.  I’d match the truckers for a dime to play that song on the jukebox.  Now, hearing that tune returns me to that time of hope in a wide open future and the promises it held. 

I’m sure we can all relate to what things trigger our own memories.  I read once that in our brains, the part that stores memories lays right next to the part that stores our sense of smell.  A whiff of Chantilly perfume brings memories of my mother as it was her favorite fragrance. 

On this day, spread out on the spare bed, is a quilt top almost ready to be quilted.  The blocks are Friendship Blocks or Memory blocks.  My many friends have each written in the white portion of a block.  Some blocks have a name and city, some have an email address, some have a nice quote, some - name only.  Once finished, I can lay under it - touching each block. - bringing the memory of that friend back to me and relive our times together.  What a treasure!  What Precious Memories.  ~pam

cell phones = mixed blessing

What was it like before cell-phones dominated our daily life?  How common is it to see a person walking along the street or shopping in a store while their attention is diverted by the ubiquitous little bit of electronics. 

I’ll have to admit, and maybe it’s my generation, I resent being always on call.  I don’t want my movements tracked!  I am actually glad sometimes to find I have ‘no service’.  My grown kids know I may just turn the phone off on a whim.  I have been glad for the cell phone when I’ve needed to call AAA for car trouble.  So, I guess it’s a mixed blessing.  At least I can turn it off when it annoys me or I’m on a secret tryst.   

The reason for this theme is my recent trip on a cruise ship.  It actually caught my attention that people weren’t going around distracted and talking into their hand.  They actually saw you and gave a smile - we engaged with one another in a polite friendly way.

See?  I was really there!

why do we do that?

Why oh why do we do the things we do?  A recent experience has me asking this old, old question. 

Human kind is a social animal.  We tend to live in groups of like minded beings.  But sometimes we become so self-absorbed, we forget to even be aware of other individuals’ existence at all.  Case in point:  I just came back from a 7 day cruise ship experience.  (a fun time for sure).  It was puzzling to find groups of self absorbed people standing and blocking passage of others at the top of stairs, doorways or even elevator entrances.  No one else can get through.

They’d step out of the elevator, then stop right where they were to discuss their next destination while the rest of us had to push against them before the elevator doors closed to send us to a floor we hadn’t chosen.  An escalator can be a real case in point.  It dumps you right into their midst like it or not.  I wore out the word “sorry” and “excuse me” as I pushed through them.  If I am guilty of doing this myself, I guess it’s payback time.

Spring is a riot!

 Do you like classical music?  I’m not a serious student of music, but I like the quieter pieces.  CD’s I buy are usually piano pieces by Chopin, Liszt or Debussy.  Igor Stravinsky is not my type, but his piece “Spring” from his suite “The Four Seasons” is a composition I understand, if not actually like listening to.

Stravinsky is trying to express the energy of Spring with a dis-harmonic cacophony of sounds from the orchestra.  Spring is such a busy season in Nature.  Winter is being flung away, to be discarded like the dirty leaves that have accumulated around my SW Florida home.  Mocking birds are having a war of notes over who gets to preside over the neighborhood from the prized location of the top of the life oak tree.  The Honey Bell orange tree next door is pushing new buds out while still trying to ripen the remaining fruit from last year.  Orchid trees, Jacaranda, azalea, and the acres of citrus groves around me are straining to begin new growth.  Even insects are beginning renewed life.  I see many honey bees and the annoying ant hills are appearing again.

You can just feel the push, push, push and rush to get on with living life renewed.

A Stickler is a Stickler

At last, I’m reading “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss c. 2003.  What fun!  I am indeed a stickler – at least on some issues.  Ms Truss validates my inner need to ‘fix’ things I think are done wrong.  I do ink in a missing apostrophe or change ‘there’ to ‘their’ in a sign – at least if I can reach it with the pen I keep in my purse.  I just can’t help myself!  I try to do it on the sly though.  I even go so far as to change the direction of a toilet paper roll in a public place if I don’t’ think it is hung ‘right’.  A close friend admitted to doing the same surreptitiously.  Wouldn’t you know any close friend of mine would be a stickler too? 

Once, I worked in a large office building which had the familiar stick-like figures on each restroom door to indicate men and women.  All the women figures had no heads.  A secret misogynist had slyly went around and scraped off the part of the decal for the woman’s head.  Is there was a message there??   

inside a city

Peculiar how memories flit in and out of my old brain.  Talking to my daughter in St.Louis, I was reminded of the strange, little quiet, pocket neighborhoods you can find hidden in a big metro area.  If any of you have lived in a large city for any span of time, you’ll know what I’m about to describe. 

These areas are usually isolated bits of two or three blocks of older homes of mixed architectural styles, – maybe tucked in behind an interstate highway and cut away from the rest of the community they used to belong to.  They almost turn into a small town of their own.  Dogs can wander freely.  Kids play ball in the street.  Men can work on their cars right at the curb.  There may be a small convenience store or tavern still left from older times.  A town within a big city.  -  An anachronism.