I read a New Yorker article and something struck me.

 

"I’ve lived my adult life so far away from my childhood, away from whatever madeleines might return it to me, and yet here I am, in some sense having never left this neighborhood. Time has and hasn’t wrought its transformational power."

from Living in New York’s Unloved Neighborhood,  by Rivka Galchen

New Yorker,   Feb. 8, 2021

Not at home to callers

"Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence"

Utterance by W.S. Merwin

The gang self isolates. 

Actually this is pretty much what we do anyway

Whateley and Piggy, action shot.

Florence 2019 (There and back again)

"He saw clearly how plain and simple – how narrow, even – it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

from The Wind in the Willow

by Kenneth Grahame 

The Past

    My parents lived through trauma of the depression, followed by World War Two. They raised four children from the money that my father earned in an automobile factory. Money was saved for each child's education after high school so they did not have to work in the factories as well. As with many of their generation this necessitated a certain frugality that persisted their entire lives. I do remember a momentous occasion when we got a "new" suite of matching furniture, chairs, coffee and end tables, a record player and radio in a cabinet, and the families first colour television in a matching cabinet. New was a big deal, although their nature did reassert itself, when the tv broke down the cabinet was fitted with doors and remained in our lives for years. 

The bathrooms were more typical of the frugality and homemade ethos with which they lived. They would often contain a decorative soap, hand painted with a decoupage image of flowers and legs made form pins and beads, the spare toilet paper roll would sit beneath hand some knitted cap (sadly never a poodle), on the wall maybe a reproduction of some well known painting picked up a A&P for buying a certain number of groceries and sometimes a hooked rug made by my mother. As an adult (and long since moved away), I gave my mother a crude pottery bowl I had made, it appeared in the bathroom with hold extra soaps etc. 

So recently when I wanted something to hold the toilet brush, I went not to the store but to the basement. I know they would approve. 

Please note: This can was selected because of the size. We have Scotland on our want to visit travel list.

So Much Unknown

But who shall so forcast the years

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand through time to catch

The far-off interest of tears

Alfred Lord Tennyson 1850 In Memorian

Riffling photos so much unknown; 

unasked, the dog’s name, the smell of the park 

the colour of a hat now lost, no eyes to see, 

when so many days lay ahead; but 

the tunnel ends, alone now with cast off bags 

no one spoke, when there is time to hear

your friends name, the make of the car

All orphans to the world suddenly alone

Questions for empty rooms, empty mirrors

but who shall so forcast the years.

A legacy of things holds freight

a story of a first this or that

weddings, service, gifts cold things 

warmed by a breath of life

Held now as your absent hand

For memory, words, stories meaning attach

to the humblest thing, the simplest occasion.

Identity itself is risked in every loss

and life itself will clutch and snatch

and find in loss a gain to match?

Or in gain a loss to hatch

For each day is not a puzzle to unravel

And some nights, peace is best

Every occasion is not greater

Then the sound of dice in your hand

Sometimes from the present we detach 

new memories for old a warm touch for cold.

Like a child with a favourite book reread.

Striving with every moment to stretch

Or reach a hand through time to catch

a moment once wasted now wanted.

It seems that age can only embrace

what comes it’s way regardless.

Each loss, each parting 

each cold alone awakening.

Those unanswerable fears.

change callow youth to miser 

hoarding half remembered days.

Some long delayed reckoning nears

The far-off interest of tears

Guy

This version Sept4/05

form Glosa