quandary…

Jeanne’s latest book with her caught in the chaos of sticking to priorities

 

A quandary sent to my pastor this am in response to her text for Sunday’s sermon:

Hi my favorite priest!

Every day I look forward to your sacred communiques!

And I have to prioritize:
1 Do I do a hand calligraphy of the sacred scripture to frame and give away? or
2 Do I meditate further on the proper of the Sunday Mass as presented with music, video, text and divine inspiration? or
3 Do I attend to an endless list of medical follow ups for both Don and I? or  
4 Do laundry, vacuum, shop for groceries, cook or attend to household chores? or
5 Do I face-time my grown children, sister, brothers, vulnerable neighbors and friends, and grandchildren?

Sometimes the pandemic cuts through with immediate needs.
Do we have the correct masks?
Is planting flowers for mother’s day an essential task?

You make the scripture louder than everything else as it should be.

Thank you for your holy touch.
Jeanne

No pressure

Ponds of Fox Hollow

 

I wanted to buy a week with the

Ponds of Fox Hollow,

not because of the boating in the pond

or the fishing

or the indoor heated pool and hot tub

or the 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condos

or the opportunities for my grandchildren from Austerlitz to play in such beauty,

but for the camaraderie

that I could have

with all the silver haired members of the Board

who dedicate their service

for decades

with grace

 

Grandchildren

Grandma’s Can’t Keep Them on the Lap

by Olivia Stiffler

They disappear with friends
near age 11. We lose them
to baseball and tennis, garage
bands, slumber parties, stages
where they rehearse for the future,
ripen in a tangle of love knots.
With our artificial knees and hips
we move into the back seats
of their lives, obscure as dust
behind our wrinkles, and sigh
as we add the loss of them
to our growing list of the missing.

Sometimes they come back,
carting memories of sugar cookies
and sandy beaches, memories of how
we sided with them in their wars
with parents, sided with them
even as they slid out of our laps
into the arms of others.

Sometimes they come back
and hold onto our hands
as if they were the thin strings
of helium balloons
about to drift off.

“Grandchildren” by Olivia Stiffler, from Otherwise, We Are Safe. © Dos Madres Press, 2013. Reprinted with permission by the Poetry Almanac for Sept. 16, 2014