Life's Poetic Moments

Dear George,

I am taking two poetry classes this term, basic and advanced.  We have a weekly homework assignment in each, and I usually write a few extra as well for good luck.  Hence, I’m wallowing in poems.  Lately I’ve been writing about anecdotes from everyday life.  Here are some examples.

Love,

Dave

Regular Eggs

Camping in the U.P.

my spouse sent me to the corner store

to pick up a dozen eggs

I found a cooler containing cartons of eggs

but half were labelled “Low Sodium”

and the other half, “Low Gluten”

I just wanted regular eggs

I searched for a different cooler 

but no luck

A lady my age walked by with her cart

I asked if she knew where the regular eggs are

explaining all I could find

were low sodium eggs and gluten-free eggs

She smiled

“All eggs,” she explained gently

“are low in sodium and low in gluten.”

“These are just labeled for the health nuts”

Sheepishly, I picked out a dozen low sodium eggs

As it turned out, they were

just as tasty as

regular eggs

(as long as you added some salt)

Lost and Found

On my way home from the Library

I happened to glance down

and lying there on the sidewalk

a shiny silver stylus

identical to the one I use to

tap out messages on my iPhone

My heart skipped a beat  

These cost ten to fifteen dollars

I could use a spare stylus

In fact, at that very moment

I had my own stylus

in my trouser pocket

I reached in to get it out 

to compare

with my new stylus

Much to my surprise

my own stylus wasn’t in my pocket 

Then I realized

I had dropped my stylus on the sidewalk

on the first half of my walk

And then I had found it again 

on the second half

In brief, I had found my own stylus

I was disappointed

not to have two styluses

But also happy not to have zero

And I was grateful to be the finder 

It could have been a five-year-old child 

Now I am curious how many possessions

I lose on my walks

I have started to keep an eye out

Sleep Music

The last concert of the season

A string trio playing

J. S. Bach

“The Goldberg Variations”

Thirty-six variations composed by J. S.

“for the refreshment of the spirit”

Number 36, an aria entitled

“Cabbage and beets have driven me away”

The Variations reminded me of

the sleep music that my spouse plays

on the radio

when she turns off the light 

And, in fact, I soon found myself nodding off

Always a bit embarrassing

When I woke I noticed a woman in black to my left

whose head kept dipping down

and jerking up

The couple next to her seemed in a comatose state

A man straight ahead of me was either

asleep or stricken by an unknown condition 

Another man had his head resting on his chest

What, I wondered,

if the entire audience falls asleep?

The trio will no doubt  continue

dedicated, as they are, to completing 

all thirty-six Variations  

Marital Meetings: My Brilliant Idea

Dear George,

Katja and I seem to be in a state of lethargy.  We’ve started our OLLI courses at the university, but, aside from that, we haven’t managed to go anywhere or do anything for some time.  I’m worried that this time is going to slip by and we won’t have done anything.  

Given that we have been married for 58 years, this inaction probably isn’t too surprising.  For my senior paper at Antioch as a Psychology major, I wrote about research on interpersonal communication.  I don’t remember too much about my paper, but one study has stood out in my mind all these years.  Researchers somewhere — I think in the northeast — placed microphones in every room in middle class married couples homes that were activated every time that anyone talked.  They discovered that, on average, married couples talked to one another about six minutes a day.  I can’t remember for sure whether they used years of marriage as a variable or not, but my vague sense is that, the longer the marriage, the less the talk.  (I did run across a recent British study that found that couples married fifty years or more only talked three minutes per hour while dining together at a restaurant.)   

I’d like to believe that Katja and I talk more than five minutes a day, but I wouldn’t be willing to bet money on it.  We’ve pretty much staked out different parts of the house as our territories.  Katja owns the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, the den, and the bedroom, where she’s busy either doing tasks, watching TV, or napping.  I spend most of my time in our two rooms that have computers — our son J’s former bedroom and what I affectionately refer to as my junk room.  We do get together for one or two meals a day, but Katja usually does a Jumble while I work on a Sudoku puzzle or read the depressing New York Times editorials.  

The other day I came up with an idea that marriages can be rejuvenated by having “Marital Meetings”.  I got this idea while watching a trailer for a TV sitcom where the mother told the kids to get ready for the family meeting.  I guess family meetings are pretty common.  I don’t know if anybody’s ever thought of a marital meeting before, but it seems like a logical extension.  I haven’t told Katja about this yet, but I have been mentally working on this idea.  The mission would be to improve our marriage by actually talking to one another.  Marital meetings could be done more frequently or less, of course, but I think a weekly meeting would be about right.  It would be good to have it for a fixed time.  Right now I’m thinking of 7:30 on Sunday night.  We’ll have had dinner and a glass of wine.  We’d be excited because it’s just before The Durrells on Corfu on PBS.  That means we would need to stop by 8:00.  I think that should be plenty.  

All committee meetings have to have a leader, and this would be true of marital meetings too.  Perhaps we’ll have an election.  Katja’s much more talkative than I, so perhaps she should be the leader.  On the other hand, it might be sensible for the quieter partner to have that job.  In any case, we’ll work that out.  The leader, of course, is responsible for compiling an agenda.  Both persons can contribute, and this should be done in advance of the meeting and publicly announced, perhaps by posting it on the refrigerator.  Some agenda items that I already have in mind: going over the local recycling rules; agreeing that the thermostat ought to be set at 73 for air conditioning; discussing of why we aren’t going camping any more; cancelling all the store catalogs that come in the mail; not watching the shopping channel on TV, etc.  I’m sure these topics would all be of mutual interest, and Katja is likely to have some other ideas of her own.  

The only time that I’ve ever done anything close to a marital meeting was when I was a teenager and my father ordered my mother to hold weekly meetings with my brother Steven and I to discuss how we could get along without killing each other.  Actually I hated these meetings, and I tried to say as little as I possibly could.  My mother said that if we kept fighting all the time (or maybe she said if I kept torturing my brother all the time) we would never like one another as adults.  This, of course, did not prove to be true.  But, even though these youthful family meetings were a bust, I’m still hopeful about the prospects of marital meetings.  We are, after all, more mature (or at least I think we are).   I plan to mention this idea to Katja next week.  I think she’ll be enthusiastic.  If it works out, I will get back to you with a report.

Love,

Dave

Summer 2018: A Photo-Diary

Dear George,

If you asked me in a noncritical moment how many summers I’ve lived, I’d probably say somewhere around 400.  It does seem like that, but 400 is definitely inaccurate.  When you’re 80, you’ve (of course) lived 80 or 81 summers, and you might have only 5 or 10 more to go.  That fact of life does make summers quite precious.  Now that we’re entering a new season, I’ve been thinking how our summer went.  It did go by in a whiz, and I don’t remember too many highlights.  However, when I looked at the accumulated photos on our computer, more things did come back.  So I decided to make a photo diary of the season.

Love,

Dave

One of the best parts of the summer was when our NOLA family — J, K, and our grandkids, V and L — visited us in Cincinnati for a long weekend in early July. 

The art museum held its exhibition of Terracotta Warriors from ancient China — truly astonishing.   

We enjoyed four Cincinnati Opera productions this season: La Traviata, The Coronation of Poppea, The Flying Dutchman, and Another Brick in the Wall (image source: Cinc. Business Courier).  

The Butler County Fair in nearby Hamilton excelled in soft fuzzy rabbits.  

Patrick O’Daugherty’s “Twisted” display at the Taft Museum was a work of genius.  

The highlight of the Boone County Fair was the beauty pageant for one-year-olds.  

We enjoyed seeing John Isner and McKenzie MacDonald at the Western & Southern Open.  

Phyllis and I went on our annual outing to the Brookville Flea Market in rural Indiana.  

We travelled to New Orleans for J’s art opening at the Newman Gallery — so thrilling.  

Then from NOLA we had a relaxing beach vacation in Destin, Florida.  

Home again, I went off on a camping trip to Winton Woods county park.