I peeked over at Facebook for the first time in two weeks and discovered that I had 87 notifications. It was enough to make me decide to stay away from social media for another week. (I miss you, Twitter pals! I wish I weren't so bad at moderation!)
I've been feeling weird about posting things from my ordinary safe boring privileged life, as if I shouldn't say anything unless I can say something important. I was also thinking about Make Our Garden Grow, from the end of the operetta Candide, and its message that even when the world is a hot mess you can tend your own little patch of it. So here are some updates from my little patch of the hot-mess world.
Tomorrow I am making the trek south to see my parents and (I hope) my siblings. I am only taking a subset of kids because of unforgiving work schedules, so this is not an internet announcement that I'm about to leave my house empty. It might be an internet announcement that some of our plants will need watering, since Elwood is not usually the plant-watering person. If you're in the neighborhood, and they look thirsty...
It's been so good to have Joe home after his year away. I am soaking it up this summer, because in the fall, when our 18yo leaves for college, we'll only have 2 kids at home. But I am not going to think about that right now. Today over lunch we had a long noisy conversation about movies which led to a heated discussion about movie brackets (e.g., Lion King or Little Mermaid?). "What else can we bracketize?" Joe wanted to know. "Epic poetry!" his older brother shouted, as he hastened to make us a bracket. "Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost?" he asked.
Paradise Lost for sure, I told him, and pulled it off the shelf to illustrate with some Book IX. He countered by pulling out Paradiso. I stood on a chair and kept reading, because height confers authority. Then he stood on a chair to read too, and since he is 6'2" I was no longer the tallest voice in the room. Model of wisdom and maturity that I am, I climbed on the table to declaim:
The Tempter, all impassioned, thus began.
O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving Plant,
Mother of science! now I feel thy power
Within me clear; not only to discern
Things in their causes, but to trace the ways
Of highest agents, deemed however wise.
Queen of this universe! do not believe
Those rigid threats of death: ye shall not die:
How should you? by the fruit? it gives you life
To knowledge; by the threatener? look on me,
Me, who have touched and tasted; yet both live,
And life more perfect have attained than Fate
Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot.
Shall that be shut to Man, which to the Beast
Is open? or will God incense his ire
For such a petty trespass? and not praise
Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain
Of death denounced, whatever thing death be,
Deterred not from achieving what might lead
To happier life, knowledge of good and evil
But since he had the pen and the bracket in his hand he overrode me, despite the combined authority of my height and my example.
I should probably remind the kids that there's no standing on the lunch table at my mother's house. Even if there are burning questions at stake.
Recent Comments