Before I explain why a song about high school sweethearts getting pinned gave me goosebumps, let me fill you in on what goes into mounting a musical these days.
The “Say Yes COVID Test” site asked for my Zip Code, and then it asked for my street address. One more click and I was informed that my test kit, which will have a total of 8 tests included, was on its way.
Gardening is an obvious metaphor to me, for life. It is action and inertia, success and failure, roses and thorns. Every season I learn something new, or remember something forgotten. There are odds of survival and inexplicable failure to thrive. This is life on earth, whether you are plant or animal.
What’s Easter all about? Generally speaking, the mash-up of fun holiday rituals and religious rites are simply that. The true meaning of Easter belongs to those who celebrate it in whatever way they choose to in a free country like ours.
I’m no legal expert. But when I hear “act of God,” I think about hurricanes and tornadoes, Noah-level floods, plagues of frogs, stuff like that. Especially here in New Hampshire, snow and cold temperatures don’t strike me as an act of God. More like the cold hard latitude and longitude of living in the northeast. We prepare for it. We allow for it when it comes to things like buying a year’s worth of road salt, or setting aside enough money to pay plow drivers overtime during a snow storm.
Feasting around harvest time is also something humans have been doing forever, contrary to popular lore. Giving thanks for sustenance was not a ritual invented 400 years ago by a boatload of Puritan refugees fleeing unrest in their home country, seeking safe harbor and a new beginning on Wampanoag shores.
But phubbing – that is phone snubbing, or the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention – has become so commonplace, I have a hard time taking seriously a recent study that suggests it is a practice that is ruining relationships and leading to widespread depression.
Today, I am choosing to dwell on the forces of good, not evil, in this world. From a grateful mother to the Umpqua Community College student and Army veteran who took five bullets as he tackled the shooter and is a real life super hero: Thank you.
I’m just another sojourner rounding an unfamiliar but expected corner on this thing called life. Motherhood has been my dwelling place. I have loved and nurtured four beautiful babies. I have answered their universal cry the best I could.
I am not sure exactly what it all means. I am not a big believer in coincidence. Things happen that are hard to explain or understand in simple terms. But if we’re listening and watching, I believe sometimes, we get what we need from the universe.