I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but time has been tight recently… we hosted W.’s First Holy Communion shindig last weekend, which turned out to be a blast. Much prep work went into the backyard celebration, between cutting the lawn, digging/mulching/planting the flowerbeds, power washing the patio, tent/tables/chairs setup, coordination with the caterer, etc., … The celebration of the Holy Sacrament was held at 10:30 AM, and was very, very nice. I barely recall my own First Holy Communion (I remember the date – May 10, 1970 – but very little else) in Holy Child Church in Philadelphia. I don’t think I internalized the event at all, and just went with the flow and followed the kid in front of me. W.’s First Holy Communion was much more intimate, and hopefully made a more meaningful impression on W than mine did on me. W. actually was picked to read two of the petitions during the mass, and he did a great job. Even while at home today, he was humming one of the songs his class learned for the celebration.
The shindig at home lasted into late Saturday night. The next morning, W. and his class helped to celebrate the crowning of the Blessed Mother in the May procession at Sunday mass. To make the day even busier, of course, we celebrated Mother’s Day with gifts from W., K. and Dad for Mom, and visited E.’s mom/grandmother in the evening, bringing some of W.’s left-over cannoli filled cake.
Friday and Saturday night, W.’s school staged The Wizard of Oz. W. played a munchkin in the first act, and a flying monkey in the second. The kids certainly practiced enough over the past few weeks, and gave a pretty good performance. I was kind of surprosed, because I know that some days at rehearsal W. enjoyed running around chasing his friends more than practicing his song and dance routine, but evidently he really was paying attention. On Friday afternoon, he was genuinely bouncing off the walls excited – it was fun watching him perform, remembering my own grade school shows back in 3rd and 4th grade, and then years later in high school. Fun stuff, for sure.
Yesterday was catch-up day on the lawn. The weather forecast for yesterday was iffy – cloudy in the morning, with rain showers in the afternoon likely, so I jammed in the iPod ear-buds and fired up the mower early. The grass had grown quite a bit in the 10 days since I had cut it last, but that was nothing compared to the neighbors’ grass. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen much of them around the house for the past couple of weeks. I heard the husband on his back porch last week or so when I was outside in the flowerbeds, and I had seen the missus a little before that, but pretty much every day their cars are both gone, all day, and I haven’t seen them in the mornings when we’re all getting out the door to work. It made me kind of wonder if something wasn’t quite right, and sure enough, it wasn’t. Turns out E. was in the local Target on Saturday afternoon when she ran into the soon to be former wife-next-door: the happy couple who bought the house next door a year after we moved to the neighborhood is filing for divorce and pretty much leaving the house to the bank. They bought when the market was high, re-mortgaged again when the market went even higher, and now that the housing market has tanked they are well under water withan asset worth nearly 100K less then they owe on it. Obviously, I am concerned as to the maintenance of the house right next door to mine and its impact on my own house’s value. We’ll see how this story progresses…
This afternoon W. and I flashed some leather and had a catch in the backyard; his throwing has improved a lot in the last year, and he’s doing a better job of getting his glove on the ball. He doesn’t always make the catch, but he’s reaching for it better, getting in front of it, and following the ball into the glove. It’s good to have the 6 foot fence behind him though, or he’d be chasing down a lot of balls that got behind him.
On the weekend of May 30th, Scouts is planning an overnight camping trip to Worthington State Forest out in Sussex County. I haven’t been out there in many a year; I think the last time I was there was to hike along the Appalachian Trail when I got caught in a downpour coming down from Sunfish Pond and had to strip down and drive home in some very wet underwear. This time, we’ll be prepared for rain, just in case.
What do I know about writing? Not a damn thing, but I do it anyway. I used to write more freely than I do know, but I’m a better writer now, technically, than before. I used to have an audience of one: me. I wrote for my own sake, when I was my only reader, in a manner which was much less cautious and much more open about thoughts, feelings. I wrote in spiral notebooks, in ink, or sometimes in pencil; I wrote in cursive, and other times in printed letters. From 1976 through the early 1990s, I wrote sometimes daily, sometimes much less frequently. Journal writing kept me very much in touch with what was going on in my life. Today, however, as I write in this blog, I am very aware that I am no longer my only audience, and I find myself hesitating to write openly and freely as I once did. I sometimes struggle with composition of sentences, with word choice, with context, and my writing is more labored than it used to be. I often feel that the writings here are forced, and uninspired, or fail to do justice to the feelings I am trying to convey. I sometimes think that my writing is just shit. 
You must be logged in to post a comment.