2003-03-17 - 8:45 p.m.
We spent all of Saturday cleaning the house, and whipping up a dinner party for eight in honor of Cary's birthday. His real birthday is next weekend, but since he and Kim are going to be out of town (she always arranges some kind of surprise get-away as a birthday gift), we moved it up a week, kind of at the last minute. Luckily everyone could make it, and it turned out well. Making a fuss over his birthday is one of the few traditions we still hold onto from his childhood. Even when we didn't have much money, I always let him pick out anything he wanted to have and cooked a big dinner. It used to be lasagna and cheesecake, but now he is likely to pick out something healthy. (We did have lasagna this year, though--the spinach and mushroom low-fat kind.)
So, another birthday down, and my "baby" is already talking about getting old. He was saying he rarely stays up past midnight, and has no interest in partying anymore. He actually went to a bachelor party and spent the evening talking to his wife on his cell phone. They are one of the few happily married couples I know: they would truly rather be with each other than anywhere else. So Cary's birthday always gives me this moment of introspection and gratitude. Children can be the source of the greatest joy and/or the greatest heartbreak, and for some reason I got incredibly lucky...mine has been a joy. I know, I'm getting all sappy. He would say, "Oh, Ma..."
The weekend went by so fast, almost before I caught my breath it was over. Which probably explains, partly, why I called in sick today. Not because I was really so sick I couldn't have gone to work, but I woke up with a headache and used that as an excuse to wimp out of Monday. What I really have is Spring Fever, and today did nothing to slow down the pace of that disease. The temperatures have been in the seventies for three days, the sun is peeping up early and bright and the sky is that wonderful pale, fresh windswept blue.
Today was mine, a little gift of private time, and I decided to have a "take good care of yourself day." I ate fresh fruit and drank lots of water, and bought some vitamins. I read poetry and played my guitar. I took the Pipsqueek on a long walk. And then I packed up my sketchbook and went over to the art museum and sat on one of the benches under an arbor and sketched for a while. I haven't been doing much drawing lately and I always miss it when I don't. For me, drawing is a kind of meditation, a process that allows me to let go of my valuing and judging mind, and just see. When I draw I make observations that I could never have made by just looking at something. It is ironic that the things that give us the most peace are so often the things we are willing to displace, put off, ignore.
I'm sitting here thinking this seems like such a strange moment in time.
I am seeking health and personal peace when the world around me is about to skid into war. I am a person who rarely internalizes the national or world situation, but these days I can't keep it out of my thoughts. What decisions do I make about how to live in an immoral world?
Spring is so hopeful and full of life force, and yet there these incredible forces of death poised to unleash their destructive power on us. I cannot imagine these forces. In my little world, spring is more real: the blooming crocuses, the budded trees, the warming sun.
The windows are open to the warm night, and I can hear the noise of the St. Patrick's Day festivities at the bars, a dull roar in the distance. What usually is a fun and innocuous holiday seems a little shrill this year, considering that we are probably within a few days of bombing Iraq. I listened to Bush's message on TV with a sinking heart. For all the words that have been said, shouted, screamed, the songs sung, the tears and blood shed to try and stop it, it is highly unlikely that war will be avoided. Saddam and his sons have to get out of Iraq in 48 hours or the bombing begins. Like that's going to happen.
I wonder how many of the kids out there dancing and swilling green beer and puking on thier shoes will have their futures ruined by this stupid war. Quite possibly that is what they are thinking about, too, and probably why the noise and music are so extra loud tonight. Maybe years from now some of them will remember this St. Patrick's day as the last good time they had before the war began. Or will America go on as normal, and just watch the war on tv, along with all the advertising and the insipid shows, and gobble our burgers and freedom fries and put flag decals on our suv's?
We don't know. We are in new territory.
Oh, I did one other thing: I hung a string of Tibetan prayer flags to flutter in the breeze from our front porch. They are red, green, white and blue, printed with traditional prayers by the monks of Tibet. I don't know what they say, I'll admit that, and I do have a bit of guilt for claiming an appealing tradition from another culture without having a background in that tradition. I don't know to whom I offer prayers, but sometimes it seems like the thing to do. Like now, for instance, I figure if there is something to it, the world could always use more prayers rather than fewer.
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