Cusp of Spring Equinox

I have always found the balancing point hypnotic.

When I was a child swinging it was the point when you are swinging so high your feet are in the air resting on a cloud and for a microsecond you feel free from gravity. Of course, as a child I didn't so much think this as feel it, but the body remembers.

When we had see saws - which were planks balancing on a stump of wood,often a cutting block,- it was very important to find the sweet point where you could get the see-sawing to go for some time. Depending on who was on the other side the point changed. Sometimes you needed two children on the other side for balance. Thinking about the fun we had and the practicality we needed to make it work, it is clear there were life lessons to be gained from this which are lost on those who no longer have to improvise.

So this makes me muse about the two halves of a day which balance in length on the equinox. We long for longer days which usher in spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. We think of spring flowers, milder wind, blue skies, the shuffling off of boots, and winter coats and mittens, Easter eggs, and hope. We forget about the beauty of the crisp night stars, the diamond snow, the warmth of a fire, frost patterns, outdoor skating and skiing, the camouflaging of dead grass and harsh lines and Christmas glitter-promise.

My parents were married on March 25th, 1962. They would be celebrating 55 years of marriage together were my mother still alive. They have a little over 55 years of history together. My siblings and I were part of that, but not part of all of it. There will always be so much we do not know or understand about each of them, much less about their marriage.

So each March I think of them and how they were and how things are now: the daylight and the night. I think every marriage is always seeking a balancing point; each day as the two people acquire new experiences and new thoughts the balancing point may change. If we never think about this actively, then I think we risk losing the balance.

I have a dear aunt who is preparing to fly off into the blue sky after ten years of battling cancer. There is so much I could say about this, but only she knows her own experiences and feelings. Words have no power to express what can only be known. I know I love her and will miss her warmth and voice that is like no other. I know, like my mother's death and too many others, I will have another equinox point between the having and not-having, the light and the dark in my life. Memories of the past are on the point of balance between the light and the dark. They hold comfort and pain, laughter and tears, longing and peace.

You never outgrow the need for the balancing point.

Beginnings, endings and in between

The biggest beginning I am part of is in welcoming my grandson Remi to our lives. Though he is still just two weeks old he has already worked his way into our hearts. When I see him or hold him the feeling of love, pride and protection I have is indescribable. I have felt it twice before in this intensity with the birth of each of my daughters. My mother said upon holding her first grandchild, my daughter Samantha, that it was the same as holding your own baby. My grandbaby is a child of my heart and in his veins through my daughter flows the blood of all my ancestors, my husband's ancestors and Remi's father's ancestors. I am grateful to be so blessed with the beginning of my life as a grandmother. I look forward to the wonder of being part of his infancy and childhood and to seeing the person he will become and celebrating his successes and his wonder. He is, like all babies, a beautiful mystery to be revealed little by little. So I must thank my daughter, Samantha, and my son-in-law, Mikhail, for bringing him into this world.

Where will these feet bring him in life? 

In his mother's arms so loved.

   This, too, is the beginning of my summer holidays. I am so tired and so grateful to be on a break. There are many students I have said good-bye to-some for the summer-some maybe forever. Beginnings and endings.

As I grow older and I know more and much less. I see that there is much more of the in between in life. Beginnings and endings are not as clear cut as they once seemed. Love can be never-ending. That is when it lifts us, and holds us, maddens us, incites us, strengthens us, excites us, inspires us and ever grows and changes with the core holding us firmly anchored one to the other beyond distance earthly, in time or dimension. Love can almost end when givers grow unkind with a pain like losing limbs. At the time you do not know if you will withstand it, but you do. It leaves a scar like a knot that was once a branch of a tree. There is strength in a knothole and a beauty in its poignant ghost of a limb. At 53 I am still discovering who I am, still learning and ,hopefully, still seeing, listening, tasting, touching and feeling with the same wonder of a child. When I get overwhelmed by the suffering, the violence, the poverty, the intolerance, the injustice in the world I look for the beauty wherever it is. That takes renewed practice each day. That takes a lot of effort and determination some days. I will be old the day I stop looking and seeing and learning.   I never want to get old in the heart and mind.

A trio of men who lit the world and leave us legacies.

Today we learned about the passing of Mohammed Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay. I'm no fan of boxing, but this man was remarkable and has left an impact upon us far greater than the number of World Championships he won or his Olympic medal.
I will let his words speak for him:
"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."

“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
"A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'”

“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”

 "I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was."

 "Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong."

“I’ve wrestled with alligators. I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning. And throw thunder in jail.”

 “Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you're going to be right.”

I was impressed how he stood up for what he believed and was stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from boxing for three and a half years because he refused to fight in the Vietnam War ans was convicted of draft evasion. After 31/2 years the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in his favour. I cannot see any athlete taking such a stance today at such personal cost. He said this: “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?,” 
After his boxing career he devoted "his life to helping promote world peace, civil rights, cross-cultural understanding, interfaith relations, humanitarianism, hunger relief, and the commonality of basic human values. His work as an ambassador for peace began in 1985, when he flew to Lebanon to secure the release of four hostages. Ali also has made goodwill missions to Afghanistan and North Korea; delivered over $1 million in medical aid to Cuba; traveled to Iraq to secure the release of 15 United States hostages during the first Gulf War; and journeyed to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela upon his release from prison.Look here for more of this. 
So another icon has passed away this year. We are grateful for the many gifts he has left to the world. 
We have lost David Bowie and Prince as well. 
“I'm a real self-educated kind of guy. I read voraciously. Every book I ever bought, I have. I can't throw it away. It's physically impossible to leave my hand! Some of them are in warehouses. I've got a library that I keep the ones I really really like. I look around my library some nights and I do these terrible things to myself--I count up the books and think, how long I might have to live and think, 'F@#%k, I can't read two-thirds of these books.' It overwhelms me with sadness."
--David Bowie

“Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.” 
― David Bowie

“Gentleness clears the soul
Love cleans the mind
And makes it Free.” 
― David Bowie

David Bowie, star-man, we thank you for the music and the inspiration. Bowie Interview

From Prince of the Purple Rain: 

"As human beings we suffer from an innate tendency to jump to conclusions; to judge people too quickly and to pronounce them failures or heroes without due consideration of the actual facts and ideals of the period."

"There's always a rainbow at the end of every rain."

"What people have to realize is that if one has a firm belief in God and the spirit then one does not make statements that are negative and untrue." 

Prince Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

We are left in the wake of three men who performed and who touched people in their different ways, with great gifts and great conviction. 

Thank you to Mohammed Ali/Cassius Clay , David Bowie/Jones  and Prince Rogers Nelson. Three men which passion, vision, determination and faith who made the world a better place.