Every year around my birthday, I plan a trip to the beach. There’s something so peaceful and predictable about the ocean and its natural habitat. This year will be different because of circumstances beyond our control, but as Jon Kabat-Zinn said:
“You can’t stop the waves…. but you can learn to surf.”
Take a look at a few of my favorite photographs from last year in Port Aransas.
Blessings to you all
Gratitude List in the Time of Coronavirus
by Ginger Keller Gannaway
Every morning while I “sit ugly” and drink my coffee, I meditate and pray. Part of my routine is reading my gratitude list. However, in these crazy coronavirus times I cannot enjoy all the things from my recent past: “Live Music” “Movie Theaters” “Dinner with Friends and Family.” So now I slow down for a new gratitude list.
1. Netflix movies & Better Things on FX
Indiewire Review of Better Things
2. Take-out from local restaurants(Cavalier’s burgers and deviled eggs)
https://www.thecavalieratx.com/menus
3. Hospice Angels who FaceTime me when they’re with my dad
4. Bird Song & wild flowers on dog walks
5. Nature Walks
6. Reading and Writing Time
What new things are you grateful for?
written by Nancy Malcolm
He was reclining in the usual spot on the couch, CNN news looping the same stories they reported yesterday when I apparently ghosted in and sat down.
“Oh! You scared me!” he said.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“Okaaaaaaaay,” he replied, and his face went ashen.
I’m sure he did a quick inventory to see if he had done anything wrong or blatantly irresponsible. “I’ll put my lunch dishes in the dishwasher, he said, ” Don’t worry.”
“Would you please at least pause the T.V. so we can talk?” I asked.
And that’s when it happened. He rolled his eyes, not at me directly, but because they were facing the T.V., I saw it from the side. My sixty-two-year-old husband is really a twelve-year-old in disguise.
He paused the T.V. but his body stayed reclined. Facing forward, he glanced in my direction, hoping that would be enough.
“Could you at least turn this way so we can see each other?”
He shifted my way but I could tell he was not in the mood for a serious discussion. We’ve known each other long enough for us both to know the signs, and there are always signs.
Oh sure, I knew better than to lead off with “We need to talk.” I knew other tools to use, ways to incorporate less threatening phrases, but it jumped out of my mouth, flew out into the air and landed in his space. Ooops there it is.
And this is where my story takes a surprising turn. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I heard a clap of thunder, metaphorically speaking. Suddenly, in a blinding light of clarity, I had an epiphany or as a friend of mine says; a talk with Tiffany.
I realized we had been in this exact place many times before. I say ‘we need to talk.’ He rolls his eyes. I get upset and he gets defensive. It was about to be a lose-lose situation. What I needed to talk about had been talked about before and so it would probably be filed in his ‘nagging’ folder, never to be seen again. I knew I had a choice to make: same old-same old or something new,
I had wanted to have Talk #32: You never say anything sweet to me anymore. You never compliment me or say words of affirmation. I would quote from Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages and end with guilt. “I always try to say sweet things to YOU….” No wonder the man’s eyes glaze over right before he rolls them. I had too many ‘always’ and ‘nevers,’ and I heard myself plain as day, the voice from Charlie Brown: “WaaaWaaaaaaWaaaa”
As if on cue, I saw his baby blues lock in on me. I remembered that earlier that day he had watered all the outside plants and vacuumed out my car. He was home, not out gambling. And, I had no doubt that he would put his lunch dishes in the dishwasher.
Sometimes God does for you what you cannot seem to do for yourself, and as I looked at my husband my mouth opened and out came, “I just wanted to tell you thank you for vacuuming out my car. That was so sweet of you.”
I felt my eyes widen and I couldn’t believe my ears, but I tried to act cool and nonchalant.
For a few seconds, he stared at me, then said, “Is that it?”
“Yes. Thank you, honey. It means a lot.”
“Okaaaaaay. You’re welcome.”
And with that, I patted his leg and said, “Carry-on, Boo.” I turned to leave the room and I heard Wolf Blitzer’s voice starting up and the recliner go back a little farther. I know his eyes never left the screen, but as I walked away he called, “Love you”
“Love you too,” I answered, and I meant it.
Now in April, 2020 the coronavirus pandemic is keeping us from celebrating in the same ways with all of our loved ones this Easter. Here’s an essay I wrote awhile back about one of my favorite family traditions. Y’all be safe and sane!
Chubby fingers clutch a pale pink and green boiled egg. Concerned eyes flick back and forth from the egg to the bowed head of the chubby-fingered 4-year-old girl’s 8-year-old brother, a boy with destruction in his eyes. The boy firmly holds a bright blue egg, and as he quickly raises his egg a few inches above his sister’s egg, the girl muffles a scared squeak as the brother aims and delivers a decisive blow to his target. POCK! “Ah-ha!” the destructor declares as he witnesses the broken crown of his sister’s special Easter egg (the one that took her a full 6 minutes to dye because she patiently dyed the pink half before carefully turning her egg over and holding it in the green dye for several long minutes). The girl juts out a “boudin lip,” yet she dutifully hands her victor brother the cracked egg. “My egg’s the champion!” brags the boy as he tosses the pink and green egg into an overflowing basket of slightly cracked Easter eggs. He struts around the grassy backyard holding the blue egg over his head. Other kids in church clothes throw sideways glances his way, but his sister simply reaches for a Goldbrick egg in her Easter basket to ease the loss of her two-toned egg. MaMa Joe tells her cocky grandson, “Way to go, cha! You beat your cousins!” but PaPa Joe sulks in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and the purple guinea egg which he refused to give up to his grandson a few minutes earlier.
For now 8-year-old Claude Emile revels in his Pock-Pock Championship for an Easter in Ville Platte, Louisiana.
Such is the way in Cajun land on Easter morning. Friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, moms, dads, grandmas and competitive grandpas compete with their multi-colored boiled eggs to win the title of Pock-Pock Champion on a bright spring day.
Our family’s Pock-Pock Rules:
My momma learned from her dad (Papa Joe) that guinea and duck eggs were harder than regular chicken eggs, but this was not always the case. Cajuns can be very competitive (even when the prize is a grubby boiled egg), and some have resorted to cheating. One Easter Emile made a plaster of Paris egg and painted it yellow. He managed to trick the younger cousins and the older relatives with poor eyesight, but when cousin Kenneth discovered the trick, the final pock-pock sounds came from Kenneth whacking Emile’s “tete dure.”
I have always enjoyed this Cajun tradition, and even though Emile’s grandkids don’t particularly like or even want to keep boiled Easter eggs (They prefer the plastic eggs filled with jellybeans or chocolates), the kids still enjoy the pock-pock competition. This Easter I look forward to spitfire Amos (age 5) going up against his calm cousin Evan (age 24) and may the best egg win!
Here is a haiku by Ginger Keller Gannaway to start off April, National Poetry Month.
4/1/2020
big-eyed baby pulled
in red wagon by tired dad
connected and apart
Sittin' Ugly Sistahs 