Always the First Times

A week ago, I was sitting at a restaurant table waiting for Clem to pick up the lunch we ordered. Having nothing else to do, I was engaged in one of my favorite sports - people-watching. People are ever fascinating to me and I am always learning something new.

A few tables away a young couple sat with their infant of about four or five months. The contented babe was in her car seat (or whatever one calls those all-purpose baby carriers these days), occupying the third seat at the table. What was interesting was the configuration of these three people. The two adults were talking to each other and it was obvious they enjoyed each other's company. Yet, they never once looked at each other, their eyes steadily fixed on the baby.You could have drawn a diagram of the triangle they formed.

And I immediately thought: New and First-time Parents! When the baby began to fuss just a little, Mom immediately picked her up. She awkwardly patted the baby on the back with palm of her hand, then passed her to Dad, who was even more aekard, and then back again to Mom. I thought, wait until this baby realizes how much power she has in this household - and she will learn to use it full-force! The tyranny wrought by a small baby.

First-time parents. Any of us who have been parents will recognize ourselves in this family, although this particular couple "had it in spades." Then lunch and my sweetheart arrived. I let go of my people-watching and turned my attention to our conversation.

Later, I reflected about how second and third children are treated. Just as loved, but without the same rapt attention. My reflection ranged further and I thought about all the first times in our lives. Only second and third children begin life as "seconds and thirds." Being a first child, I sometimes try to imagine what it would have like to have been a second or third.

None of us don't have the option of doing something the second time, without there being a first, whether we are painting a room, going somewhere by plane, hiking in the mountains, or catching our first fish. There has to a first time for everything we do - even second kids really aren't exempt.

I thought of all the firsts in my life. As awkward as I might have been, like the mother patting her new baby on the back, I am thankful for all those first times. In many ways they are the spice added to my life.

Late Nesters

I am always amazed thinking of the very late nesting pattern
of the American Goldfinch. Here it is mid-June and robins,
grackles, and house wrens all have little fledglings flopping and
flying about. And -- the goldfinches haven't even begun to
prepare for making a nest and laying eggs. The books say that
since goldfinches serve regurgitated thistle seeds and other late-
maturing flower seeds to their young, they don't start anything
until late in the fall. They are among the last to nest.

Elizabeth and I make a point to plant flowers in our gardens that
mature late in the fall . . . cultivated thistles among them. AND,
should a wild thistle come up somewhere . . . we leave it alone.
Here is a little poem I wrote some time ago when we had a
hammock tied between our White Pine and Flowering Crab
Tree.


   GOLDFINCH

Sun sets low
    over
        fall flower garden.

In hammock comfort,
   without glasses,
       my eyes nearly closed -

garden shapes blend with
     Monet-like blurriness.
          Yellow abounds. Cicadas call.

Aglow in gold,
     a tall garden plant is
         sunflower tipped.

Then -
     one flies
          away!

Ho, Ho, Ho - the Joke's On Us

I'm not complaining. I have always liked to do the dishes
at home. Makes for a sense of order and new beginnings.
Every day!

We do have a dishwasher, and I use it. It is an old one and
it still works, just like me. Once in a while, some pans and
other things need just a little "prep" before they go into the
washer. Then the button gets polked to enable the magic to
begin! So - I still need to buy liquid dish soap.

About the liquid dish soap . . . For the last few months, I
noticed that it seemed to be a lot more runny than before.
Not nearly as much body to it. At first, I didn't pay much
attention. Then, I noticed that the liquid soap runs off the
surface needing to be pre-scrubbed, before it has a chance
to foam up and do its work. For a while, I thought it was a
matter of "quality control" at the liquid dish soap factory. A
bad batch perhaps?

I checked other brands lined up along the dish soap aisle. It
is easy to do . . . just tilt the plastic bottle a bit, then return
it to the upright position and see how long it takes before the
soap returns back to the level. The saying that "water seeks
its own level" applies to liquid soap as well. Try it yourself!
Call it comparison shopping. Invariably, the result is almost
the same. Dish soap actually is less viscous. Though they
look the same with their "cheerful" colors of green, blue, rose,
lavender, and yellow.

I saw a report in the news that all kinds of products are being
resized and modified in some way, but appear to be the same
or even a better deal. Packaging is creatively deceptive. In the
name of  "being green" by saving packaging material means
less price. "Low price" for even a lesser amount, because people
pay more attention to price than to quantity. I decided that I need
to be on the lookout for deals that may not be deals - for me or
for the environment.

Oh, and another thing . . . I  noticed this morning that the water
coming out of our kitchen faucet seems to be considerably thinner,
less substantial. Do you suppose that our city's water plant, in 
order to save money, has found a way to remove one of the 
hydrogen atoms from H2O, so that it is now simply -

HO, HO, HO ! 

Survival Guilt is Easy

It is easy to have survivor guilt. Missed your plane connections - and the plane goes down and you weren't on it. Skipped work - and there is a gasline explosion down the street. A tornado mows a destructive swath across your town - and you were outside its path with no damage to your house. Born with a desired skin-color and get a good education - while less fortunate folks live in poverty. Canceled that trip to Europe at the last minute and a volcano blows in Iceland - stranding people in airports by the thousands.Sometimes you breathe a sigh of relief and consider yourself lucky. But at others times when you think of people caught in tragedy that you barely escaped, the guilt can seep in.

Here, at the Nagel household, the two of us move forward in our house-remodeling projects. Fortunate to have the income and the skills to make a beautiful house even more beautiful. While a half mile away, folks are still clearing trees downed by the tornado a week ago, filing insurance claims for damage to their homes, and grieving the loss of shade-trees that have sheltered their homes for years.

A few more miles away in north Minneapolis, people's misfortune is far greater. Forty percent if them are renters with less than responsible landlords even in good times. Now they wait and live in temporary shelters or with friends and family, unsure if their landlords will make repairs. Other houses are beyond repair - and people who had little before the tornado now have nothing.

In Joplin, it is difficult to imagine how anyone in the path of a far more destructive tornado could had survived. It looks as though everything was ground up into little pieces and spit out. As our favorite weatherman says, other natural weather disasters give warning. When a hurricane is moving toward land, there is time enough to board up windows and leave. A snowstorm heading your way - time enough to stock up the pantry and wait it out. But tornados are different, he says. There is no predicting when they will form - and people often have only minutes to seek shelter.

Meanwhile, we are painting the walls in the bathroom. A lovely color called Cancun Sand. We will go to bed tonite in our nice home, with the satisfaction of one more step done toward completion of ourenovation. And not indulge in guilt, because there are people who have no homes and whose future is most uncertain.

What does a person do with the goodness that life bestows, when others suffer? When we were younger we would be helping the cleanup after the tornado. Chainsaw in hand, we would clear damaged trees and offer our support to people who survived the terror of the howling wind. We would have organized work parties to go to Joplin this summer. And we would have let people know that we cared about what happened to them - because sometimes that is the most important thing to give. Doing is a good antidote for survivor guilt.

Growing older sets some unwanted physical limits for us. A chainsaw in my hands would be a dangerous thing! Our respectives calls to be of service to people in need has been replaced by a call to write - in the hope that our writing will make a difference to someone. Just as the books we have read by others all our lives have been a source of wisdom and inspiration for us. Writing is a different kind of giving back than showing up with a chainsaw - and takes some getting used to. And our careful management of money means we have more to give to others than when we were educationg ourselves and our children.

The thing with survivor guilt is that it serves no good purpose - even when it prods a person to "do something."  How much better to have gratitude for all of what we have at the moment.